


Tumblr Ficlet Collection : AtLA Edition

by silkinsilence



Category: Avatar: The Last Airbender
Genre: ...Not all at the same time, Abuse, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Bloodplay, Coercion, Emotional Manipulation, Emotional/Psychological Abuse, F/F, F/M, Father-Daughter Relationship, Ficlet Collection, Fluff, Hurt/Comfort, Ignores the comics completely, Implied/Referenced Child Abuse, Jealousy, Knifeplay, Light BDSM, Parent/Child Incest, Possessive Behavior, Post-Canon, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Spanking
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-05-16
Updated: 2018-02-03
Packaged: 2018-06-08 21:08:49
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Major Character Death, Rape/Non-Con, Underage
Chapters: 50
Words: 32,655
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6873310
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/silkinsilence/pseuds/silkinsilence
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
      <p>As the title (and tags) say, I'm importing various fic snippets I've written on tumblr. Expect mostly Ozai/Azula and Mai/Azula, with some other things (Ozai/Ursa, Azula/Katara, Azula gen) thrown in for good measure.  Tenses, verses, lengths, and styles will differ.</p>
    </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> As the title (and tags) say, I'm importing various fic snippets I've written on tumblr. Expect mostly Ozai/Azula and Mai/Azula, with some other things (Ozai/Ursa, Azula/Katara, Azula gen) thrown in for good measure. Tenses, verses, lengths, and styles will differ.

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Tyzula, written on the prompt "the aftermath of Ursa walking in on Ty Lee and Azula."

They never locked the door, and they had never expected it to be a problem. The servants were all terrified of Azula, certain that she would incinerate them for intruding on such a scene. Zuko tried hard to insist that she wouldn’t be burning anybody, but Azula had no problem with encouraging the rumor. Actual violence and the threat of violence were, after all, very different, and the latter could be just as effective. All of Zuko’s speeches about making a good impression were largely wasted on her.

But the lesson was driven in not by a servant after all.

It was evening, the windows thrown wide to let in a breeze, the candles filling the room with flickering golden light. Azula was propped against pillows, arching against the bed’s backboard. Her robe was untied and open, and sweat covered her skin. A naked Ty Lee was busy between her legs. The acrobat’s tongue was as flexible as the rest of her, and the myriad sensations she was drawing forth catapulted Azula into a state of ecstasy where her every nerve was alight. She stayed there, rocking her hips against Ty’s face, each and every bite and lick and suck sending her higher and higher into the clouds. One hand tangled in Ty’s hair, keeping her head obediently in place.

As busy as they were, even if they had heard the gentle knock on the door, probably neither would have responded. As it was, Azula heard nothing, her mind too far in the clouds, and Ty Lee’s ears were filled only with the sweet moans she was drawing from her princess.

The door opened.

“Azula, are you–”

Ursa stopped where she stood. Both of the girls were frozen, Azula’s face stuck somewhere between bliss and fury, Ty Lee turning redder than a tomato. If it had been anyone else, Ursa might have laughed at the absurdity, but she was wise enough to keep her lips sealed. It was a good choice, Azula thought, for the chances of her tossing a fireball at her mother were probably just as good as the chance of attacking a servant.

“I’m sorry. I’ll go,” Ursa said, after an extremely uncomfortable pause. She began backing out, but a cold voice stopped her in her tracks.

“No. Ty, go. I want to speak to my mother,” Azula said, her eyes fixed on the woman. No blush flushed her cheeks. Modesty, she thought, was wasted on Ursa, as were any emotions that were not contempt. Ever since Zuko had found their mother and brought her back to the palace, Azula had avoided her. Scars didn’t heal themselves, and in Azula’s opinion Ursa had done a horrible job of trying to patch up any of their wounds.

“Are you sure–?” Ty glanced between mother and daughter.

“Go!”

Ty Lee positively scurried from the room, grabbing her robe from the floor and pulling it over her shoulders as she left.

Azula was a dragon whose rage was slowly uncoiling itself. She kept her eyes fixed on her mother as she rose from the bed. It was enough that she had been rather close to climax and had been denied that, but Ursa’s inability to wait for a response was infuriating. It told Azula that her mother still didn’t respect her, and so Azula saw no reason to reciprocate.

She didn’t bother tying her robe closed. If the sight of her nude body made Ursa uncomfortable, so much the better.

“Did you have something to say, or was interrupting your only goal?”

Azula spared nothing when it came to her mother. Suppressed anger, contempt, and scorn came to the surface in a tidal wave and came out as a spear directed straight at Ursa. She wanted the woman broken and crying for forgiveness she would never bestow. She wanted to see her mother brought low as she had been brought low.

To her credit, Ursa did not cower in the face of her daughter’s snarl. Azula wanted her mother ripped apart, but she respected her more when she didn’t flinch.

“It’s not important anymore.”

Azula watched Ursa’s eyes move down her bare flesh, probably marking each and every scar. She hoped her mother blamed herself for every last spot.

“So the latter, then.”

Ursa took a handful of steps forward and made as if to place her hand on her daughter’s shoulder, but she clearly thought better of it. Too bad; Azula had been ready and eager to bend her mother’s wrist back.

“I’m glad you have Ty Lee.” Ursa walked to the balcony and stared out. The pose was reminiscent, and it made Azula uncomfortable. She didn’t want to think she had anything in common with her mother. Their faces were far too similar for comfort in the first place, a fact that had haunted her during her stint in the asylum. “It’s good that you have someone to trust, since I can’t be that person for you.”

Azula didn’t know whether Ursa was being passive-aggressive or just idiotically sentimental, and frankly she didn’t care. Analyzing her mother the same way she had analyzed her father was a waste of time. She didn’t want to understand her. She just wanted to hurt her. “I don’t trust Ty. I made the mistake once, but I won’t again.”

Ursa raised an eyebrow. “You—make love to people you don’t trust?”

Ugh. “I’m not making love to her. I’m fucking her.”

“I would assume…” Ursa’s voice assumed a certain sharpness, losing the sappiness Azula so detested. “Especially for you, I would assume that there would have to be some level of trust to allow anyone so close.”

Azula pretended to consider the issue. On the inside, she was sharpening her knife, preparing to deal a blow that would stop her mother’s tongue running. “I don’t trust anybody. I just don’t see that as a reason to deny myself physical pleasure. And my little acrobat is just irresistible.” She paused. “And I never got the impression that Father trusted me that much anyway.”

It took Ursa a few seconds, and then Azula was rewarded with the satisfaction of watching her mother’s face pale and contort in distress. But the princess was done with the conversation, and if Ursa wouldn’t leave then she would. Her hands tied her robe while she headed for the door. It was only when one hand rested on the handle that her mother spoke again.

“I’m sorry I interrupted.”

Azula rolled her eyes and threw the door open.

“I really am glad you have her.”

She slammed the door behind her and gritted her teeth, resenting the woman that set her so easily on edge, determined to find Ty and continue where they’d left off.


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Azutara, written on the prompt "things you said when you were scared."

Love was supposed to cure everything, wasn’t it? _Wasn’t it?_  …Or was that only for people who hadn’t been broken beyond repair? 

Katara couldn’t fix her. It was a horrid truth that, try as she might, Azula did not want to accept. Why didn’t her pain go away? Why couldn’t she sleep at night? She was getting tired of waking up screaming. Nightmares were old friends, but unwelcome. In the asylum, her dreams had been largely pleasant, escapes from reality.

Now Ozai was there, whispering in her ears, trailing his hands across her skin. (Oh, the things he’d say to her in reality, if he knew what his daughter was doing with a peasant from the Water Tribes, worse than Mai or Ty Lee or anybody else–)

_“She doesn’t love you, Azula. They’re using her to make sure you stay stable. They’re using her to control you. Nobody really cares, remember? She will leave, just like everybody else.”_

The nightmare struck closer to home than any of its counterparts. Azula awoke and clapped her hands over her mouth, fought back the nausea. Her mind was spinning in circles, repeating the words over and over again. Her voice, her mother’s voice, her father’s voice.

And she knew it was true.

Before she could stop herself, the tears were coming out, like she was a child again. She hated herself for them. She tried to stifle the sobs, but they came too. So weak. So pathetic. And then she aroused the sleeping woman next to her, but Katara’s gentle hands and soft voice, reassuring her that everything would be all right, sounded like a mockery.

 "Don’t touch me,“ she rasped, wrenching herself away from the contact. This, too, was a regular enough occurrence that Katara let her go. "Get out. Get out. Just leave. I know you want to.”

“I’m not going to leave,” Katara said. Why did she have to be like that? Why did she have to be so understanding, so kind? Azula wanted to hate her for it. Wanted to, but she couldn’t. “I love you. I’ll stay with you. I won’t ever go.”

“Everybody leaves,” Azula said. She was grimly certain of it. Ursa. Iroh. Zuko, two times over. Mai. Ty Lee. And even Ozai, in the end. None of them cared enough. Nobody cared enough.

“Not me.” Katara said it as fact, as certainty, and that only agitated Azula more.

“ _Will you live forever?_ ” she hissed. It didn’t matter that it was unreasonable. Even if Katara was always by her side, even if she kept all of her promises, she would die, and Azula would be all the more alone for having loved her.


	3. Chapter 3

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Modern AU, written on the prompt Maizulee and arson.

“Never thought you’d be skipping school to do something like this,” Mai drawled, staring across the broad space of the abandoned warehouse. She’d noticed the girl sneaking off campus during lunch, and following her had been simple. Ordinarily she wouldn’t have cared, but everybody knew that Azula was top of her class and set to inherit her father’s business—a typical snobby rich girl (not that Mai could talk). But here she was, tossing lit matches into a barrel of wood. That was enough of a story to catch Mai’s attention.

Azula turned slowly, as if she’d been expecting company, and she didn’t seem surprised to see Mai there. “And I never thought you’d skip class to tail me. Zuzu put you up to it?” She threw another match as she spoke. Judging by the way the wood caught fire, there was an accelerant in there.

“No,” Mai said, honestly. She found Azula interesting enough without comparing her to her brother, and she and Zuko had gotten into a rather nasty fight the day before.

“That’s a relief.” Azula struck another match and threw it onto the concrete floor, where it burnt itself out and died.

“Why are you–?” There was something about the way Azula looked at each tiny flame, with something like devotion or fervor, that put Mai on edge. If it was anybody else, she might have thought they were drunk, but that didn’t seem to be Azula’s style.

“Practicing.” Azula turned her back on the metal barrel. The fire gave her a sharp silhouette in the dimness of the building, and Mai couldn’t deny that there was something alluring about the girl, her dark lips curled into a smile while her hair was tinted orange in the light. “We’re going to burn something big sooner or later.”

“We?” Mai repeated. She didn’t move, even as Azula got closer and closer.

Azula’s eyes narrowed. She glanced over her shoulder. “Ty Lee!”

Of course. The two were practically inseparable. In a moment Ty Lee had appeared around a corner. Unlike Azula, she did seem surprised to see Mai.

“Oh–!”

“What happened to keeping a lookout?” Azula asked.

“I got distracted watching you,” Ty Lee said apologetically. “You look so pretty when you light matches! It’s not my fault.”

It was a good answer, judging from how Azula smiled and turned her attention back to Mai. She was very close now, just a foot or so away, and it was all the more apparent when she held up the matchbook and pulled one out.

Mai’s face remained stoic, but her heart began to speed up. She wouldn’t put it past this girl to burn her, and people weren’t exactly likely to investigate screams coming from old abandoned warehouses. Maybe she should have gone to class after all.

Azula struck the match and held it up between their faces. Mai’s eyes watched it, her mind speeding to find a way to escape without harm. Her worries proved groundless, though, when Azula parted her lips and the match disappeared into her mouth. A few seconds later it reappeared, extinguished, and Azula blew a lazy smoke ring out into the air, smiling with the satisfaction of someone who knows they have impressed.

“…You must be fun at parties,” Mai eventually said, impressed despite herself. She wondered how many burns this girl had on the inside of her mouth.

“I would be if I went to any,” Azula said. Then she tossed the match aside, leaned forward, and kissed Mai.

The indignant “hey!” from Ty Lee became background noise when Mai felt Azula’s fingers in her hair. The other girl’s lips tasted like char and ash, a taste far more addicting than Mai would have ever thought possible before. When they pulled apart, Mai found herself wondering what other sides there were to the girl in front of her.

She would have to find out.


	4. Chapter 4

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Post-canon, Azula getting her own dragon.

The whole world had exclaimed in amazement when Fire Lord Zuko had resurrected a creature thought lost decades ago, appearing at the capital with an egg whose contents the nation murmured about until the mystery was resolved. Druk, he called it, and the dragon grew and grew, until its wings were as broad as the horizon itself. Zuko told nobody of Ran and Shaw, a civilization hidden away, where he’d gotten the egg.

He didn’t tell anybody, either, about the dragon’s littermate, or that he hadn’t been alone on that journey to the Sun Warriors. And when people saw a blue ribbon snaking across the sky, they assumed only that the dragons were returning, that maybe they’d mistaken Druk’s color.

Azula didn’t mind the privacy. When Zuko had taken her to stand before Ran and Shaw, the last thing she had expected was to see dragons, their sinuous form and colorful fire erasing everything she had thought she had known about firebending. A second, more earth-shattering shock had come when the dragons had set the eggs before them. Azula had stared at her reflection in its surface and wondered if her luck was, after years of battling hallucinations, hopelessness, and friendlessness, turning around.

The weight of responsibility bore down on her. Zuko wanted her to return to the palace with him, for them to raise their charges side by side, but Azula refused. A few weeks in that place were painful enough; she could not stomach years. She retreated to the temples of the Fire Sages, those places that had been her haven while she researched every last arcane detail of firebending to keep her mind off the sense of despair that lurked around every corner.

She called the small blue dragon _Hizeme_ , and in it she found the will to live again. She abandoned her studies (much to the relief of the sages, who feared the dragon would burn scrolls), abandoned everything else, ate and bathed and slept only as her new companion did. Azula did not generally like animals, and had it been Zuko’s pet, she would have probably found joy from stepping on its tail or kicking it, but the slightest hint of a threat to Hizeme found the former princess’s eyes crackling with deadly static. When it coughed up its first fireball, singing her stomach quite badly, Azula had only soft words of encouragement as the pain gnawed at her.

Hizeme grew. One day, its fire was not only orange, but every color of the rainbow, and what it caught did not burn. Azula watched with wonder. One day, it spread its wings and took to the sky, moving like a snake against the blue. Azula could not go with it, but it returned to her, pinning her down and nuzzling her with affection even after just the short separation.

One day it stopped growing, too big for most of the rooms in the temple, its head almost as large as Azula. She looked into its great dark eyes and saw something there that she had never seen before. Loyalty. Love. Untainted by impatience, expectations, or fear. There was steadiness and wisdom in those eyes, an ocean of calm to counterbalance the turbulence of her own soul. Hizeme asked her no questions, made no accusations. They rode together, like the wind, like the clouds, and Azula closed her eyes and knew that as long as Hizeme was there, she would live, and she would be all right.

On a windy, bright day when Azula had almost forty years to her name, she and Hizeme descended from the skies above the Fire Nation’s capital to cries and shouts of the citizens who saw them against the clouds. Azula hadn’t told her brother she would be visiting, a fact that became evident when, upon landing, spear-wielding guards surrounded them. Hizeme glanced a baleful eye up at its partner, but Azula placed a gentle hand on the dragon’s forehead before sliding off.

“Aunt Azula!” There was Izumi, running across the lawn despite her robes, her eyes wide behind her spectacles. It had been almost a decade since Azula had last seen her niece, and now she was no longer a child. “It’s been so long!”

“I supposed the siblings should reunite,” Azula said levelly. After spending so long in near-isolation, with only the sages for company, the presence of so many people was somewhat alarming.

Zuko was following his daughter, echoing all of Izumi’s surprise and none of her excitement. Though he was young yet, there was grey at his temples, and wrinkles had started to etch themselves around his eyes and mouth. 

“Welcome back,” he said, just a hint of unease clear in his stance and voice. Azula resisted the urge to spit at his feet. She didn’t want to return to this place either, the reminder of her past failures. In the shadow of the monstrous palace, the years of peace and contentment that Hizeme had brought her seemed to fade away.

But Hizeme knew her, and the great dragon coiled its tail protectively about Azula, its eyes locked on Zuko. Azula stroked the blue scales and smiled. Hizeme brought her serenity.

“I thought Druk and Hizeme should meet,” she said. “But maybe it’s best if I leave again.”

“No!” Izumi exclaimed, stepping between her father and aunt. “Please, I want to talk to you. I want to hear what you’ve been doing. You’re a much better storyteller than Dad.”

“Ty Lee is in the capital,” Zuko said, “in case you wanted to see her.”

Azula sighed. Stress and anger, stifled for so long, were beginning to rage in her again. She knew it. This place was unhealthy for her. She wanted nothing more than to turn and go.

“You can leave whenever you like,” Izumi said, a hint of childlike pleading in her tone. Azula stared up at the palace. Inside those walls was Mai. Inside those walls were ghosts of things that were so easy to forget with distance. Somewhere in the city was her father, rotting away in a cell.

(Her stomach turned; memories flashed before her eyes.)

“…All right,” she agreed, stepping outside the coil of Hizeme’s tail. She would return later in the evening, sleep curled up beside her companion, for the dragon kept the nightmares at bay.

Before she went, Azula turned to face Hizeme. The dragon leaned its head down, its eyes showing her the same love they always did. She touched its nose and stayed that way for a long time before following the people she no longer considered, as much, to be her family.

She went to fight ghosts and her past, but it was easier now, for wherever she went, the knowledge that she was loved went as well.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hizeme is Japanese for "torture by fire." Not a great name for a companion, Azula...!


	5. Chapter 5

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Ozai wins AU; Azula and her daughter.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Warning for Ozai/Azula.

Three years after the comet turned the skies red, and three years after Phoenix King Ozai began his crusade against the Earth Kingdom, Azula began her calculations. She spent her days and nights at her father’s side, smiling and obeying his every order as if she had no other thoughts in her mind but perfect service to his cause. Inside, traitorous thoughts hatched.

Azula had read enough to know how to time that which she wished to achieve, and so when the blood flowed from between her legs she ceased drinking that careful brew, a certain kind of poison, that had been her constant companion for seven years.

She was careful, two weeks later, to ensure that nobody in the palace saw her departing for her father’s chambers. Their copulation had become a secret only in the loosest sense of the word, but she would not be seen attending him tonight. She waited until it was very late and then crossed the halls like a sleepwalker. He was asleep, and at first irritated at being disturbed, but her gentle coaxing soon had him more than willing to do the deed.

Ozai fell asleep again when it was done, and he was asleep when Azula slid the knife into his throat. The room was dark, but she watched the progression of blood across the pale sheets nonetheless. The Phoenix King breathed no more, proving his title a misnomer. Azula left the knife where it was, knowing it would be traced only to the guard whose sheath she had borrowed it from.

In the morning, a palace, a country, and a world began mourning. And the Phoenix Queen hid a smile as she took her place on the throne on top of the world.

(If they suspected she was guilty, nobody dared mention it; the guards all feared Azula as much as her father, and the nobles thought it didn’t make a difference.)

She didn’t know whether she noticed the changes because she was looking for them or because they actually were remarkable, but when Azula felt her breasts grow heavy and when tiredness became a constant, she smiled in secret and thought of the thing growing inside of her. She had chosen to have it, and that made all the difference. As long as she thought of it merely as an extension of herself, she could stomach it. She could tolerate its presence inside of her.

At a little more than three months, Azula had herself examined by the palace physician, who told her what she wanted to hear. And Azula went forth and delivered the news to her people, explaining that the child’s father was a young soldier who had gone off to war and never come back. The country mourned the child’s imaginary father with her, even as they rejoiced that they were to have an heir so soon. Azula rested her hands on her bloated midsection and thought of the power that would course through her offspring’s veins, for the child was the progeny of the most powerful firebenders in the world.

After hours of an excruciating labor that left the doctors and maids with more than a little singed hair and clothing, the Phoenix Queen looked down at the result of years of plotting and scheming and discovered that the baby didn’t look like much at all. It was a smaller human, a sack of bones and skin with a swollen head and dripping in fluid. No wondrous love coursed through her at the sight. But it was part of her, and she had worked so hard to bring it into existence, so Azula held her daughter close.

Izah was born underweight, with a small covering of black hair already growing from her scalp. Azula looked down at her and thought of what the girl would become, and she smiled.

She wouldn’t tell her daughter that they had a father in common.

* * *

Her mother was the sun.

How was it possible not to feel inferior next to such radiance? Izah sat in a constant shadow. What little light she could produce was a hopeless match. Even if she hadn’t felt overwhelmed, overshadowed, Izah wanted to reach out and touch Azula. She wanted to hold her, to hug her, to feel just a bit of that light. But she couldn’t, because her mother was the sun.

In eight years, Izah could remember being held once, and only once. She had been six, and a gang of revolutionaries had managed to break into the palace. She heard running and screaming in the halls, the sound of metal clashing on metal. She didn’t know what to do, so she had stayed in her rooms, hidden behind a bookshelf. What had probably only been a few minutes had felt like hours. She was just a child, shaking, hoping nothing bad was going to happen. They were there for her mother, she knew, and with every second that went by she became surer that Azula was dead.

Then there had been rattling at the door, then banging. She heard rough voices and shrank in on herself. They were trying to knock it down. She heard slam after slam, and finally the sound of splintering wood. Izah kept her whimpers inside. She was about to die. Even if she could make it to the window, it was far too high to jump—

Screams. The voices had gone through her like knives. A sickening stench hit her nose, one that she would only recognize later as burning flesh. There was a strange crackling, and all the while Izah was too afraid to raise her head.

Her mother knew where to look. When Azula rounded the corner and saw her tiny daughter crouched in hiding, the Phoenix Queen’s face had relaxed. Slowly, her lips had curled into a smile. There was blood splattered across her robes and face, but to Izah, her mother had never appeared more radiant.

“Mother,” Izah managed, and then tears started pouring down her face. Azula tilted her head to one side. She held out her arms in a gesture unfamiliar to Izah, then reached for the girl when Izah failed to respond. For the first time she could remember, Izah was being held in an embrace like the heat of fire. Her mother smelled like ash and blood. Over Azula’s shoulder, Izah saw mangled bodies on the floor.

“They won’t touch you,” Azula said, making the promise into a lullaby.

But now Izah was eight, and that time seemed as distant as when she was an infant. Surely Azula had held her then, though Izah couldn’t imagine any of it. She couldn’t think of her mother as pregnant, her stomach swelled, vomiting, or in labor, screaming with pain. She couldn’t imagine her mother feeding her, or rocking her, or doing anything she associated with motherhood. Azula was always impeccable, always cold, like a statue. At times Izah couldn’t help but wonder if she was Azula’s child at all.

She had asked about her father before. Something like a sneer had crossed her mother’s face, something ugly. It scared Izah.

“He died in battle with the Earth Kingdom,” Azula had said dismissively. “Just a soldier. Don’t worry about him.”

The words were innocent enough, but the look on her face had been enough to convince Izah that she shouldn’t ask any more questions. She turned to servants instead, but none of them would offer any more information than Azula had. It was hard to get more than a handful of words out of them. None could even tell her what her father’s name had been. In the same way Izah couldn’t imagine her mother giving birth, she couldn’t imagine her mother being married. Soft kisses and caresses were not Azula’s way. She seemed at all times to be surrounded by an invisible shield, intangible, untouchable.

“You’re stepping too soon and falling over your left foot. That’s the third time. Come, focus.” Azula’s voice was stern, not judgmental, but Izah felt the crushing weight of her mother’s disappointment nonetheless.

Though Izah had tutors for her other subjects, it was her mother who taught her bending. Izah got the distinct impression that her mother was hoping, one day, to see her daughter’s fire turn blue. Izah wished with all her might, tried with all her heart, but there was nothing for it. Too often she struggled with the most basic of forms.

“Now, try again.”

At her mother’s behest, Izah shifted her weight and kicked, then jumped back. But as they had before, her feet got caught up with each other, and the next thing she knew she was sitting on the stone of the training floor, pain shooting up her back and sadness creeping down on her.

Azula sighed. It was quiet, but Izah heard it. She was too scared to look at her mother, too scared to see what expression that still face would wear.

There was a long silence. Izah sat.

“…Is something wrong?” Her mother’s tone was almost aggressively neutral, making the question sound more like a statement.

“No!” Izah scrambled to her feet to show she was all right, and only then did she look at Azula. The Phoenix Queen was resting her face on one hand, her brow furrowed. Izah fervently wished to disappear, or to do something amazing. Anything to make her mother smile.

“Am I…explaining this badly?” The words came carefully, as if measured.

“No…” How was Izah to explain that her mother’s presence was the problem? She had seen Azula bend. She had seen those elegant limbs wield fire as if it was no effort whatsoever. When her mother bent, it looked like a dance, like something that she had been born to do. When Izah tried to bend, every second felt as if she was contorting her body into a position it didn’t want to assume. Her mother’s even golden stare, regardless of whether she showed her disappointment or not, made everything a hundred times worse. When Azula watched, none of her limbs moved how they were supposed to. She had done this form perfectly a hundred times yesterday, but now, when it mattered, all she could do was fall.

There was a long silence. Azula continued frowning. Izah fidgeted where she stood, quite uncomfortable with being stared at.

“Do I intimidate you?” Azula asked finally. Izah opened her mouth to spill forth a well-rehearsed lie. “Tell the truth.”

“…Yes,” Izah mumbled. Her eyes fixed on the ground again. Azula sighed once more, then walked forward.

“We’re done for today. Come with me.”

Izah obeyed, unsure of whether to be happy that the torture was over or to be braced for a lecture. Her mother’s reprimands were always delivered in the same even tone, but in some ways Izah wished she would scream. It made it seem as if Azula didn’t care.

They walked together across the training field toward the palace, Izah maintaining a few feet of respectful distance behind her mother.

“Your weakness is only in your mind,” Azula said abruptly. Izah lifted her head. “I’ve seen you bend when you think nobody’s watching. Why is it different when I’m there?”

“I get scared.” Izah felt very small. Her cheeks were flushing dark red.

“ _Why_?” There was something in her voice that Izah had never heard before. Her mother sounded almost desperate. Izah didn’t understand. Wasn’t she about to be lectured on her failure? She just wanted to go and cry about another day’s work wasted, about disappointing her mother. She didn’t want to answer hard questions. “Do you think I’ll hurt you? I won’t.”

“I don’t want to let you down!” Ah, there were tears now. Izah wanted to disappear. Saying these things aloud made her feel weak. Her mother, so bright, so powerful, surely had never known worry like this. Her mother, who never showed too much emotion, undoubtedly found this display deplorable.

Azula stopped walking. She turned in a swish of scarlet and crimson and faced her daughter. Her eyes burned with an intensity that Izah had never seen before, yet Azula did not seem to be angry. She rested a hand on her daughter’s shoulder.

“I am your mother. I made you. I chose you, Izah.” She closed her eyes and took a deep breath before opening them again. “You must not fear me. Children…shouldn’t fear their parents. You don’t need to _earn_ anything from me. I care about you.

”…I _love_ you.“

The words sounded stilted and strange coming from her mother’s lips. With a shock, Ilah realized that she couldn’t remember ever hearing that from Azula before. There was no use holding back her tears, and now they were streaming down her face. Why did it help so much to hear that? Every cell in her body had longed for her mother’s approval. She wanted to deserve her love. She needed to try so much harder.

When Azula gathered her daughter in her arms, Izah felt herself enveloped in warmth, in the grip she had dreamed of for so long, and she never wanted to let go.


	6. Chapter 6

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Ozula, "don't forget that I own you."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> We're entering a series of Ozula-only fics, I'm afraid. Warnings for incest, obviously, as well as heaps of emotional manipulation and abuse. Sorry. Also, sorry for the gap; we're on vacation and the wifi is shitty. 
> 
> I don't think I mentioned this before, but I'm uploading in chronological order, so older fics are being posted first.

“Did you enjoy your little vacation?”

The tea sits between them, untouched. Her father faces away from her, leaving her only his tone to decide his mood. 

“I suppose. I don’t do well without…structure.” She recalls Ember Island, remembers Zuko’s little temper tantrum and her game of acting ordinary. It was just a useless diversion. She belongs here, with him.

“Interesting rumors I’ve been hearing,” Ozai says, and it is then that she begins to worry. Her father is decent at concealing his emotions, but reading his every inflection has been how she has survived fourteen years with this man. She begins to wonder what he’s heard. “Supposedly a gang of four teenagers burned an admiral’s house to the ground. Would you happen to know anything about that?”

“…To be fair, Zuko did most of the burning.” She doesn’t lie to her father if she can help it. The secret of Zuko and the Avatar in Ba Sing Se weighs on her chest. She doesn’t know what her father would do if he found out. She doesn’t think she wants to know.

“An amusing diversion, I’m sure.” He turns to face her at last and settles down, pouring tea for two. His face gives no hints as to what he thinks, what he feels. “But a party? Do such juvenile distractions really hold any appeal for you?”

“Only simple curiosity.” She tries to pretend that the insult doesn’t hurt.

“And the kiss? Just simple curiosity?”

Her eyes fly up to look at him before she can stop herself. She doesn’t ask how he knows. It’s not important, after all. And now fear and resignation both begin in earnest.

“…Yes.”

“Oh, I thought better of you, Azula.” He slides her cup toward her. She looks down at it and hesitates. He smiles humorlessly. “It’s all right. Drink.”

She does. He stands and crosses behind her. She doesn’t move, doesn’t look, even when she feels his hand in her hair. He’s gentle as he plays with the silken strands. She closes her eyes and waits for something.

“You’re mine.” One gentle hand caresses her throat; she waits for compression. The other strokes her cheeks. His fingers trace her lips, and then he digs his thumbnail in. It’s long enough to draw blood. She feels red trickling down her chin and dripping into her teacup. “I didn’t think I needed to remind you of that.”

“I’m sorry, Father,” she says automatically. Her eyes remain closed. And she remembers kissing Chan, who never drew blood or made bruises.

“I didn’t want an apology. I just wanted loyalty.” He kisses her, tilting her head back, and though both of them burn very hot Azula still feels cold.


	7. Chapter 7

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Ozai comforts Azula after Mai and Ty Lee's betrayal at the Boiling Rock.
> 
> or is that "comforts"

She had been standing. She had been at her balcony, looking over her city and thinking too much. She didn’t know when it had happened, but when she heard noise from inside her rooms, she wasn’t standing any longer. She was huddled in the corner, hiding from the world, pretending she couldn’t see the sky. She didn’t know that she had the strength to stand on her own.

She knew it was her father long before he stepped out to join her. The hags had kept their distance ever since Zuko’s betrayal. The servants, too, knew how volatile their princess’s temper was, and they stayed far. 

“The warden sent a messenger hawk explaining what happened,” Ozai said. Azula kept her gaze on his feet. Lifting her eyes was too much effort. She didn’t want to see her father’s look of disapproval. She just wanted to close her eyes for a very long time.

“It doesn’t matter. I don’t care.”

“Really? It looks as if you’ve been crying.” His finger brushed her eyelashes. She turned her head sharply away. “What were those girls to you?”

“They were nothing,” she rasped. “They can die.”

“But you didn’t kill them. Why didn’t you kill them, Azula?” His voice was gentle. He stroked her messy hair behind her ears. She hated that it felt nice. She wanted him to hold her; she wanted him to disappear and leave her utterly alone.

“I’ll bring Zuko’s corpse to Mai and Mai’s corpse to Ty Lee, and then they can all burn together.” Her voice was flat. Imagining it brought her only the faintest joy.

“In that case, I have news that may interest you.” He held out a hand. After a second, she accepted it. The simple effort of moving her arm was incredible. He pulled her up as if she weighed nothing at all. “A princess should stand tall, Azula. You were not made to grovel.”

“What is the news?” Her voice had more energy in it, if only slightly. Ozai’s lips hinted at a smile.

“War balloons saw your brother and his new friends heading north. We believe they’re camping at the Western Air Temple.”

Azula remembered what her brother had taken away from her. She imagined his screams as she burned him alive, imagined what his body would look like burned beyond recognition, and she smiled a mirthless smile.

“I’ll kill him.”

Ozai’s arms wrapped around her, unmovable, unshakable. His breath was hot on her neck. “You can depart tomorrow morning. We still have time.” And it became all too clear then that she had found a lover’s embrace when she had only sought a father’s.


	8. Chapter 8

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Ozula, modern short.

“You don’t do well in the heat.”

“It’s not the heat. It’s the humidity.” There’s an edge to her voice, though she keeps it carefully dulled around him. He chuckles, and she feels the vibrations through the bare skin of his chest. “I do fine in just heat.”

“Very well. Next time we’ll go somewhere dry. Egypt, perhaps? Turkey.” His fingers sweep her sweaty bangs across her forehead. She watches his Adam’s apple contract. She hates the feeling of sweat coating her skin, of being sticky in the heat. Even in the shade of their hotel room, where air conditioning and a fan help, the oppressive temperatures creep in. Skin-to-skin contact doesn’t help.

“In the summer? We’d have to stay inside.”

“That’s fine, isn’t it?” His fingers pluck a grape from the bunch and hold it to her lips. She opens her mouth reluctantly and accepts it. She hates grapes. He knows that. She chews and feels the fruit burst in her mouth. “There are things to do inside.”

“I’d rather go somewhere cold. Let’s go to Antarctica.” Flat. He traces the lines of sweat as they make their way down her neck, between her breasts, down her stomach.

“Don’t be childish. It doesn’t suit you.”

She eats the next grape and the next. She can taste salt on his fingers. 


	9. Chapter 9

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Azula panders; Ozai reaps.

It had been the twins’ idea, or at least their suggestion. Azula’d had her doubts about whether it really originated with them, but compliance seemed to be ultimately the best option. 

Her mother’s wardrobe had remained untouched. The clothes had been locked away in the closets of a spare room. They smelled dusty, like the wood of their residence, as the servants pulled them out and laid them on the bed for Azula’s perusal. 

She’d rather wear her mother’s dressclothes than waste time being fitted for her own, but it still felt strange to pull them on. She thought she could smell a hint of Ursa’s perfume. Maybe it was just her imagination. Azula was shorter than her mother, so that the heavy dresses dragged on the floor. The vast sleeves, rather than making her feel regal, just seemed useless, an obstruction to moving her arms freely.

“They suit you, Princess,” one of the hags said as she pulled on endless robes, tied endless sashes. Though each design was varied, the red and gold and orange and sepia and amber blurred together, all shades of fire. Azula wished for something blue.

“Hmm,” was all Azula said. She looked at herself in the mirror and thought nothing of it. She looked best in armor. 

“Which will you wear to dinner?” the other twin asked.

“This one,” Azula said carelessly. The crones said nothing, so it was decided. She sat in the mirror while the servants tied up her hair. The robe she’d chosen had lotus flowers embroidered across it, gentle and beautiful, just like Ursa.

She decided she hated it.

The hall was filling with nobles and military officials by the time she made her way down to join the banquet. People looked at her, but never for too long; her searing golden eyes were a quick deterrent. 

Her father was waiting for her at the far end of the hall. She crossed to him. When he caught sight of her, she saw his eyes widen. He smiled. They stood close together, close enough that they wouldn’t be overheard, close enough that it might give something away.

“What do we have here?” he murmured. They didn’t look at each other, but out at the people.

“Mother’s clothes,” she said absently.

“You look exquisite,” he said, and he smiled. She said nothing. Already she was bored and ready for the night to be over.

A man was approaching them, one of the generals. Ozai leaned closer again for a few brief seconds.

“Later, I want to see you wearing nothing at all.”

She looked sideways at him, but he was already stepping forward to greet his guests. After a moment she followed. The sleeves of her dress were too heavy, pinning her arms to her sides.


	10. Chapter 10

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Modern AU. Written on the prompt of "one of them being drenched while wearing white."

He’s laughing. It’s the first sound she hears when she surfaces. Her feet find the tile at the bottom and she stands, quaking, air rushing in her ears. He pushed her in. Her fear means nothing to him. The time underwater, when her brain spun out of control and her heart raced faster and faster, was just a few seconds to him, but eternity to her.

She wades back to the edge and hoists herself out, scowling. Her hair hangs in wet, dripping clumps around her face. It’s not even that warm of a day.

“Don’t look so angry,” he chuckles, catching her with one arm as she attempts to walk away. “You shouldn’t stand so close if you don’t want to fall in.”

“Thank you for the advice.” She shouldn’t be so stiff. She’ll pay. But she can’t help feeling things sometimes, letting her emotions slip into her words, especially when her heart is still beating hard enough to punch through her chest.

“You’re irresistible.” He lets his eyes wander over her like she’s art, a statue, something that doesn’t mind being stared at. Azula follows his gaze. Her shirt is now see-through and clinging, and with an internal sigh of resignation she knows what comes next.

Poolside the tile is warm from the sun. She scrapes her nails along the stone and wishes she was still underwater.


	11. Chapter 11

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Ozula.
> 
> Next chapter will be Maizula and then another string of Ozulas. 
> 
> These must get quite grim back-to-back. Google some kittens or something.

When the Fire Lord calls a recess and the generals disperse, Azula wonders whether any of them suspect anything. Father and daughter disappear into a side chamber, just far enough that nobody can hear. Do Zhao’s eyes follow them? Do they whisper after they’re gone?

They’re barely in the side room when Ozai has her thrust up against the wall. It’s dark. There are no windows and they didn’t bother to light candles. They don’t really need sight.

“So intolerably dull,” Ozai sighs. His hands fiddle with his own belt before moving on to hers. 

“You don’t enjoy Ko Ju’s analysis of how many grain shipments should be sent to the eastern bases?” she asks, laughter in her voice. He slides into her and thrusts hard and quick and mercilessly.

“Hardly. Not–with you there beside me.” He leans in for her neck. He’s _considerate_ enough not to kiss her on the lips, not to smear the red mask she always has painted there. But his teeth dig in, and his hands are a vise on her hips, and she arches her back to humor him.

If the generals suspect anything when they emerge, hair slightly out of place, new purplish bruises blooming under Azula’s high collar, they don’t say.


	12. Chapter 12

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Modern AU, Maizula, sexy fluff. Sluff.

It was her birthday, and Mai was tied to a chair.

Part of her wanted to complain, to struggle. The other part insisted that, as it was her birthday, she should allow herself to relax and enjoy herself without pride getting in the way.

The annoying thing was how much she didn’t mind being tied up, and that Azula knew that. 

Her hair was all out of its constricting bun, swishing low and beautiful past her shoulders. Somehow Azula looked entirely different when her hair was down; still in control, but unpredictable, wild, an effect that was enhanced when she smiled widely enough to expose her teeth.

“Are you having fun?” Azula asked. She propped one leg up on Mai’s chair, in between her bound legs, her stocking toes teasingly close to Mai’s crotch. Her hair cascaded down, as fluid as water, to brush Mai’s cheek. Mai’s eyes were level with Azula’s breasts. She wanted to look away, but that would defeat the purpose of this little show, her _present,_ as Azula had called it.

“I guess,” Mai said levelly. Now, even if she wanted to avert her eyes, she didn’t think she could. Azula’s graceful fingers were undoing the buttons of her black blouse one by one, showing skin and more skin and then…

Her bra was white lace today, so innocent, so virginal. It didn’t suit her.

Mai’s mouth was very dry.

“Just ‘I guess’?” Azula pulled away from the chair. Her blouse was tossed carelessly aside, puddling on the floor. Azula had her back turned to Mai, and she bent over, _way, way_ over, until Mai could ascertain that her panties matched her bra.

Azula pulled her skirt off with a little shake of her hips. Mai exhaled too loud, a little sound that _of course_ Azula heard.

She turned around again, smirking, and came close. Her lips leaned down to Mai’s ear. 

“Because it kind of seems like you’re really enjoying this.” Her fingers pressed gently onto the spot where Mai’s clit was covered by her pants. Mai let out a strangled moan. Azula’s smile widened. “Then let’s continue, shall we…?”

Her hands reached around for the clasp of her bra.


	13. Chapter 13

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Ozula, Modern AU, diamonds, silk, and flowers.

She felt the sun, warm on her face and arms, and reveled in it for a few long moments before she opened her eyes. She couldn’t tell what time it was–eight or nine, perhaps?–but it didn’t matter. She would get up when he got up, and no sooner. School was thousands of miles away from whatever island resort they were occupying.

She awoke with the knowledge that she had been sixteen for a day now. She stretched out and prepared to close her eyes again, but an unfamiliar weight about her neck stopped her.

Azula could feel the chain and stones of a necklace under her fingers, but she couldn’t crane her neck to see it. She hadn’t been wearing it the night before. Slowly, so as not to disturb the man slumbering beside her, she reached around to unclasp it.

It hung heavy and breathtakingly beautiful from her hands. There were seven diamonds there, the centerpiece the largest and a dark, deep blue. Azula supposed it must have cost him a small fortune. Just a drop in the bucket. He would place this elegant, delicate collar around her neck, but he wouldn’t resist taking what he wanted, not even on her birthday.

He’d awakened sometime while she was examining it. He was watching. She could feel his eyes on her.

“My favorite color,” she murmured, because she felt she needed to say something.

He shifted, took it from her hands and clasped it about her neck again. It was warm in the room, and his heat against her was unpleasant. When he’d finished, his arms moved to encircle her waist instead. He pulled her closer to him.

“Your mother didn’t like jewelry,” he said. She could feel the vibrations of his voice.

She frowned at the mention of the woman she tried her best to forget.

“She preferred flowers. I sent her great bouquets, roses and poppies and lilacs. She’d put them in vases and water them, and in a month they’d be brown and crumbling.”

His hands went wandering. He found the hem of her silken nightgown. As idly as if he was petting a dog, he stroked between her legs. She could feel him, hard, against her hip.

“She was like that, Azula, fleetingly beautiful and then withering away.” He looked at her, searching, considering, and then gave a cold smile. “I suppose you’ll be the same way.”

He wasn’t interested in continuing to talk, but took up kissing along her shoulder, sliding away the strap of the flimsy garment. 

She closed her eyes. _No._ She was not a flower. She was a diamond, crushed and pressurized until something impossibly beautiful and hard emerged. Her father did not know how sharply he had cut her edges.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Seriously, comments are appreciated.


	14. Chapter 14

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Ozula, "things you said that I wasn't meant to hear."

It was three years to the day, a fact she wouldn’t have remembered if not forced to. Her father hadn’t summoned her the night before, was absent at breakfast, and then Azula recalled what day it was.

When she’d finished her lessons and the hags were finally done with her, she went out into the gardens. She knew she would find him there, and she did. He was kneeling beside the pond where the turtleducks swam. She could smell the incense from a distance, a smell that reminded her of Azulon’s funeral. She walked closer, silent as a shadow, unbeknownst to her father.

A small portrait of Ursa sat by the water’s edge, next to the incense. It was a good likeness. Azula looked at the picture of her unsmiling mother and hated her all the more. She was not even dead. She was just gone, leaving Ozai to sit by the water and mourn her loss.

Azula prepared to turn away, to pass the rest of the afternoon in practicing her fire to forget the emotion she feels. She wished she could forget her mother entirely. She wished her father had buried her as completely as she had.

She heard her father say something, only just loud enough for her to catch it, and then she very much wished she hadn’t.

“I miss you.”

* * *

He came to her in the evening. She sat trying not to feel anything and desperately failing. How inconvenient it was to be alive. She didn’t know why her perfect control lapsed so completely when it came to Ursa. She didn’t really even care about reasons; she cared only about results.

“I called you, Azula.” Maybe there was a threat in his voice. Her jaw worked. She stubbornly refused to look at him. She could hear his footsteps on the hard floor, closer and closer. Obedience had become second nature to her, but tonight she didn’t want to obey. It didn’t matter what he did in the end.

“The servants said you refused to come.”

Both facts. She stared out the window and waited for him to do something. He wanted her mother, did he? Then she wouldn’t play the compliant little lover tonight.

“Look at me, Azula.” 

She did not.

“You’re being childish.” He was more patient than usual, she noted, though an edge had definitely crept into his voice.

“I _am_ a child.” She bit her lips and glared out at the sky. A child, when she scorned the label as young as nine, when blood flowed between her thighs and lightning sparked from her fingertips. No, she was not a child.

Ozai finally seemed to tire of her stubbornness. He strode forward, fixed her chin in his iron grip, and _forced_ her to look at him. Not quite done with her game, Azula closed her eyes.

“Do you want me to treat you like a child, Azula?” His voice was impatient. The edge was more evident now. “Shall I spank you and send you to bed? Shall I lock you in your rooms and forbid you breakfast? Would you like to go play with your friends instead of studying to be my heir?”

She was stone, unmoving, unspeaking.

“I don’t _want_ to hurt you, Azula.”

too late.


	15. Chapter 15

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Ozula, "things you said when you were drunk." More Maizula up next! Thank you for your comments. I know I'm shit at replying, but I really do cherish each one.

There were stars dancing in her head. She felt tingly, limber, fire coursing through her veins hotter and more aggressively than usual. She was warm, so very warm, sweat collecting on her forehead and in the curve of her spine. She would have loved to bend, to move, to release all her heat and energy in a blaze of blue, but her attentions were otherwise occupied.

He was smiling, and so she smiled, moved for him, pulled her clothes slowly off and watched his smile grow.

“You’re entrancing, you know,” he said. He pulled her close. She could feel every inch of him, from his goatee tickling her neck to the erection pressing against her thigh.

“Do you love me?” she asked, laughing a little. The world swayed around her, too bright and out of focus, but he was clear and steady. She clung to him and kissed him, her hands finding the waist of his trousers. She was so hot she felt as if her head might burst, as if her brain would boil within her skull. Touching him was almost unbearable, but she didn’t want to let go.

“Azula,” he said, and he wasn’t smiling anymore. She blinked, not understanding, and tried to kiss him again. He moved his head, so she settled for his neck. Her hands found him, stroked him. Why wasn’t he answering?

“Say you love me,” she said, her voice almost a whine. She was frustrated with his lack of response. She needed to hear it. She tried to think of when she’d last heard it, but she couldn’t recall in her current state. “Say you love me more than Mother.” _I’m better than her, stronger than her, smarter than her._

His eyes went hard. There was scorn on his face. She knew, with a sudden sinking in her stomach, that he wasn’t going to say it.

“Why can’t you be _perfect_?” he growled. Then his mouth was hard and hot on hers, his hands going for her wrists and pinning them so she couldn’t touch him. She didn’t like it, then. His words were echoing in her head, and it was all she could do to stop herself from crying.


	16. Chapter 16

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Canonverse, Maizula, spanking. ( ͡° ͜ʖ ͡°)
> 
> Next time is actually one of my favorite shorts I've written.

Pride and pleasure had come into conflict more times than Mai could count since they’d started this, since Azula had first managed to discover one of the inclinations that Mai had never shared with Zuko. Azula’s brother was always gentle, always careful and loving, and Mai had never found it in herself to tell him that, sweet and pleasurable as it was, it wasn’t what she wanted.

She couldn’t stop from feeling utterly ashamed, both that she acquiesced to this and that she enjoyed it _so_ much. Self-loathing was a familiar companion. But, Spirits, _it felt so good_.

“In the future, maybe I’ll flog you,” Azula said, her hand stroking Mai’s rear through the cloth. “But today, just the hand.”

Mai bit down hard on her lip, trying to stem the flow of images of Azula striking her with a whip, a belt, of the pain and the welts and she should not have been as wet as she was. 

The princess had peeled back her pants, leaving Mai’s skin exposed. Azula’s other hand pressed Mai’s head more insistently into the sheets. Breathing was a little hard, but Mai didn’t really mind. It was reminiscent of another, more brutal fantasy, wherein Azula wrapped her talons around Mai’s throat and…

Azula hit her, very lightly. Mai’s noise of disappointment was, mercifully, swallowed by the sheets. A second strike followed the first, not even hard enough to conjure that lovely sound of a slap across skin.

“Harder,” Mai said begrudgingly.

“I don’t want to hurt you.” The sugary, false concern in Azula’s voice was enough to make Mai grit her teeth. She strongly suspected that what Azula enjoyed about this _wasn’t_ hurting her, seeing marks rise on her skin, but rather was just about the power of it. Azula enjoyed forcing Mai to humiliate herself.

“Hurt me,” Mai said shortly. She imagined she could feel Azula’s smile like it was a tangible thing.

The next strike was harder, and the next, and the shame was forgotten as pleasure and pain wrestled inside Mai. She bit into her lip. Each new slap made her want more. She was so pathetically wet, longing for Azula’s fingers to reach further between her legs, but she wasn’t going to beg for that as well.

Mai was already sore from the other times they had done this, and she didn’t have much in the way of extra flesh there. Imagining the new pattern of bruises only made her hungrier.

“Is that better?” Azula’s tone was heavy with false concern again, even as a particularly vicious slap made Mai gasp into the sheets. Her hands balled into fists. It took all her effort to keep from shaking.

When she didn’t respond, Azula’s hand slid forward to stroke Mai.

“I’ll take that as a yes,” the princess said, her other hand gently patting Mai’s head as if she was a dog.


	17. Chapter 17

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Canonverse. Background Ozula, but really only implied. I'm quite fond of this one!

Identity is a foolish thing to worry about. She is Azula, has always been Azula (heir apparent to the throne of the Fire Nation, blue firebender, prodigy, monster). She cannot relate to Ty Lee’s struggle to define herself because she cannot understand it. Why would Azula need definition? She is who she is. The world looks at her and sees her the way she wants to be seen.

But still, she looks at Ty, abandoning her country and her family for some silly dream of freedom, and she wonders. Would any of Ty Lee’s sisters be the same, bright-eyed, upbeat, more substance than essence? How different can they really be? She wonders and wonders, never voicing her thoughts aloud, about what makes Ty Lee Ty Lee when her sisters are near-perfect replicas.

And this silly wondering leads her into other questions that she can’t answer, even though the answers are more important. Impossible hypotheticals aren’t of any interest to her, which makes it all the more infuriating when they buzz about her head like discontented wasps. She is Azula. There is nothing to question. She does not need to think what she would be if she was born a nonbender, born in the Earth Kingdom, if she was the one with so many identical siblings, because she was not and never will be. She does not need to define herself. She is exactly where she wants to be.

Nobody sees the shadows, and so they aren’t a part of her. The separation is easy. She is no longer the foolish and shaking little girl who left these irritating scars on her skin, and so they are not _really_ her. She does not cry any longer, and so the tears of the past are not hers. She is not a composite. She is the serpent, shedding her skin and leaving it behind her. 

Her father calls her a rose, and it sounds mocking on his lips. She does not know whether the scorn is his or hers. Perhaps the comparison is apt, something dying in the winter and blooming come the heat, beauty and thorns, but Azula prefers the snake. She likes her fangs.

 _And what if they saw you like this?_ she asks herself. No fangs. No scales. Her father calls her a rose because that is all he sees of her. Even his touch feels mocking now. She thinks it used to feel like love. _What would they say then?_

It doesn’t matter, because they don’t see her like that. Mai and Ty Lee and the rest of the world see the serpent. Azula knows it is fear, perhaps has been fear all along, but fear is so much better than pity. Ursa ran and never looked back, and now love is only this, only her father, only the Azula that nobody else sees and thus does not exist.

Her father knows her better than anyone else, but this thing called love is a slippery illusion, and she knows that his love for her has more to do with her mother than her. Her father knows her best of all, but when he looks at her, he does not see what she wants to be seen. He sees the rose, his rose, the thorns mere decorations, and he plucks petals one by one.

Azula cannot find an answer to her wonderings, and it makes her uneasy. She shoves the thoughts aside as useless, and yet they buzz about the back of her mind. Ty Lee and Mai are gone, Zuko is gone, Ozai does not love her any longer, and Ursa is smiling from a mirror.

In chains and screaming for all the world to see, she finds her answer:

She is Azula, and she is nothing at all.


	18. Chapter 18

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Maizula, canonverse, burn.

“Does it hurt terribly?”

It’s raining outside. With the windows open, Mai can hear it coming down, a lovely sound, the weather trapping them inside. It’s a lazy afternoon that she could as well have spent anywhere else, but she chose to spend it here. She told Zuko she was going to visit Ty Lee. Instead she lies here, clothes abandoned on the floor, another body pressing against her own.

Azula insistently strokes the raw patches of skin that trail across Mai’s side. They will scar unless treated, and Mai doesn’t want to treat them. 

“Why are you asking? You know what it’s like,” Mai says flatly. The pain of those fingers, though, is enough to make her grit her teeth a little. Burns are not like cuts. Azula hurting her is nothing like hurting herself.

“Yes, but it’s different.” Azula moves her hand lower, her fingers alighting on the jut of Mai’s hipbone, and in an instant they sear. “I’m a firebender. I’m used to heat. You aren’t.”

Mai clenches her jaw, arches her back, her muscles tense against the pain. She does not cry out. She is very very good at silence. She imagines the mark joining the others, the pink skin, the blisters. She passed up Zuko for this. It was worth it. She deserves far worse than what Azula gives her.

“I don’t know. It just hurts,” Mai says, a little testy. There aren’t words to describe pain. It just is. “It’s pain. What are you asking?”

“It can’t be just pain,” Azula says, sharp nail digging into a new burn and forcing Mai to tense again. “You wouldn’t keep coming back. You wouldn’t end up all flushed and needy, panting like a whore.” Her hand wanders upward and caresses Mai’s chin. Mai leans her head back and wonders how many more insults she’ll take, why she bothers to take them.

(Is it an insult if it’s true?)

“I don’t know what it is,” she says finally. She never has. All she knows is that she should not be doing this, should not enjoy it when her skin melts away, should not spend scads of time staring at her growing collection of scars. Should not, should not, should not, but she does.

Oh, she does.


	19. Chapter 19

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Maizula, canonverse, warning for rape.

She’d been looking for her brother, but what she found was much better. Just Mai, her back to the princess as she sat at Zuko’s desk, framed against the window like the shadow she loved pretending to be.

“Where’s Zuzu?”

Mai jumped quite badly. Azula’s entrance had been silent. The flinch gave her a rush of satisfaction. Drawing reactions from Mai was true delight. But despite the jerk, Mai didn’t turn to face her princess. Not only was it rude, it was uncharacteristic. Usually she knew her place, or knew it well enough to go through the motions.

“…Out,” Mai said. Her head turned enough that Azula could see the pale curve of her cheek. Azula strode closer.

“Leaving you alone? What a rude host.” Azula’s eyes wandered about her brother’s chambers. Though they hadn’t been home long, his rooms were messy, far messier than hers. She looked at the rumpled bedclothes and wondered whether Mai had spent the night.

“It would be a more grievous offense to ignore his duties as a royal,” Mai said. Her voice was more strained than usual. Maybe she and Zuko had gotten in a fight, and he’d stormed off.

But then again…

Now that they were closer together, Azula could see the blush on Mai’s cheeks, far more color than was usual. Mai sat woodenly, unnaturally stiff. Still she refused to move, refused to shift toward Azula. And that jump, more exaggerated than was usual.

“What are you doing here, all alone?” Azula closed the last of the distance between them. One of Mai’s hands sat on the desktop. Her other was hidden under the wood. Her face was still cast downward, but the pink in her cheeks was more obvious up close.

“Nothing.”

“Nothing?” As quickly as a snake, Azula struck. One hand seized Mai’s visible wrist, preventing her from struggling; the other darted underneath the tabletop and confirmed her suspicions. Mai’s hand had slid underneath her waistband. Her fingers were wet.

“Oh, you little liar,” Azula said, unable to keep the glee out of her voice. Mai had gone tense, as stiff as a board, though her arms strained against Azula’s grip. It was a futile effort.

“Azula, stop,” she hissed. Azula paid her no mind.

“Sitting alone in my brother’s chambers and playing with yourself? What would your parents say?” Azula’s fingers explored the wet hot space between Mai’s thighs. She was surprised, on some level. She’d imagined Mai being as awkward and indifferent to sex as she was to everything else.

“Don’t!” Mai’s tone became more forceful. Her breath hitched audibly when Azula’s thumb found her clit and toyed mercilessly with it.

“Don’t? But you’re here waiting to be found with your hand down your pants, aren’t you?” Azula leaned in close, traced the side of Mai’s jaw with her lips, found her earlobe and bit. “I never took you for such a  _harlot,_ Mai.”

She felt the shudder as it passed through Mai’s body, saw the tremor in her lips. Mai’s hand was a fist on the tabletop. Her cheeks were red. After a few more seconds of Azula’s fingers stroking her, she closed her eyes and tilted her head, exposing her neck to the princess.

Azula smiled and accepted the invitation with glee.


	20. Chapter 20

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Ozula, canonverse, "druxy."
> 
> After this come my Femslash February fics, and there are some real gems in there!

They aren’t even _visible_ unless she’s naked.

He hasn’t ever mentioned them before, and she doesn’t know why he chooses this, of all times. She can see danger in the slits of his eyes and the curl of his lips, so she does what is safest and waits in silence for the end of it all.

His fingers stroke them so gently that her eyes fly open. He’s still smiling, though it doesn’t make her feel better. She glances down to where his hand is, brushing her ribcage, tracing the parallel scabs there.

“Where did you get these?”

It does not matter how good of a liar she is. Lying is not an option when it is he who towers over her and holds her as a lover. What lie is there, anyway? They’re so obvious, and she hates herself all the more for that. She never learns, not really, and now she’s dug herself a hole.

“Father…”

“Where, Azula?” His hands move away from her shame and grasp her hips instead.

“I cut myself,” she says. She says it flatly, because otherwise she might cry, and that would be inexcusable, unforgivable.

“Why?” 

“I’m weak.” She says it not because she knows it’s what he wants to hear. She says it because it’s true. She knew she was weak when she slid that elegant silver knife from its sheath, and when she slid it across her skin, and when blood dripped down her stomach. If she was stronger, she wouldn’t have done it. If she was stronger, she wouldn’t need to do it.

“You can’t take it back, you know.” He shifts to speak directly into her ear. She shivers, but it’s a relief not have to stare into his eyes. “They’ll scar, and your skin will never be smooth and unmarked again.” 

Is that what he cares about? He wants her porcelain. He leaves bruises and burns and wounds that will never heal, but she has damned herself with a few little cuts.

“Give up on perfection, little princess,” he says, and pulls back so she can see his smile. Then he brings their hips together and she grits her teeth. There is nothing sweet about this pain. “You’re already too late.”


	21. Chapter 21

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Maizulee, Fire Lord Azula AU, lazy morning. Please comment. I'm hungry.

Something is different when she awakes, and the change is stark enough that she sits up all at once. Her eyes are wide and dangerous, searching for something wrong.

Then there is a hand on her bare back, stroking gently. She turns and looks into a familiar face. Mai’s hair is falling loose and free, a sight that Azula has become accustomed to from so many nights and mornings, but somehow it’s never less beautiful. 

“Good morning, Majesty,” Mai says, her tone hinting at the barest note of amusement.

Azula realizes what’s different then. The sun is high in the cloudless sky, spilling gold into the room. Ty Lee is nowhere to be seen, but the other two have awakened before her. She cannot remember the last time she woke up after sunrise. Late nights and early mornings have been routine since childhood. But here she is, slumbering late.

“You didn’t wake me?” She settles a bit, relaxes her shoulders and looks around. It’s odd to wake up to the sun, but it’s not unpleasant. Everything is softer. The note of accusation in her voice is fainter than it would usually be.

“It’s your birthday,” Mai shrugs. “The empire won’t collapse if you sleep in, you know.”

“A dangerous precedent,” Azula says, but her eyes are gleaming. Her birthday. So it is. She’s been enjoying them more and more. Twenty-four, is it now? Almost a decade on top of the world. She feels fire pulsing through her at the thought. She turns back to her Fire Lady and enjoys the sight of Mai’s pale skin, the slope of her breasts. There are sweet red bruises rising there from the previous evening. Hers. All hers. All the world at her feet.

“Kiss me,” she orders.

“Of course, Majesty.” The faintest smile flashes across Mai’s face before she leans in. Her knees straddle Azula’s waist. She nibbles at her Fire Lord’s lips until Azula opens them. They kiss until Azula tangles her hand in Mai’s silky hair and pulls her away. She simply looks for a while, admiring the view.

“Kiss me,” she says again, and her eyes flick down. Mai smiles a little more broadly this time, but before she can obey the door opens. 

“Oh, good, you’re up!” Ty Lee’s smile is more radiant than the sun, and in that instant even just the lovely embroidered robe she wears is far too much for Azula’s liking. “I thought you might be sick or something. I’ll send for breakfast.”

“Ty Lee,” Azula says, summoning her other Fire Lady with a wave of impatient fingers. “Take the shroud off and join us.”

“But breakfast…”

“Can wait.” Azula smiles, and if Ty Lee takes another second to move, she’s going to drag her to bed herself. “As Mai was kind enough to remind me, it’s my birthday, and I _will_ have you.”

It only takes a second for the silk to slither from Ty’s shoulders, and then at last she joins them. Azula lies back and smiles a slow smile as her Fire Ladies shower her skin with worshipful kisses. 

This is how it was meant to be, and this is how it will be, _forever._


	22. Chapter 22

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Maizula, Azula-wins-the-Agni-Kai AU, angst.

Azula’s face is alight in a way that Mai has never seen before, and that alone is enough to terrify her. She shows nothing, shows no fear at all, but she stands back from the door of her cell to give the illusion of safety. She never expected Azula to visit at all after throwing her here. Her presence still has the ability to put Mai so instantly and effectively on edge. Mai can think of many tortures the princess might concoct. She sets herself in stone and forbids herself to ponder them.

The jailers slide open the door and Azula steps in. She always was shorter than Mai, but she seems to dominate the cell. Deep red robes, elaborately embroidered, shroud her figure, and Mai doesn’t know what to make of the crest in her bun.

“I brought you a present,” Azula says, her smile like a storm. She snaps her fingers and her long nails glint in what little light there is in the cell. Two soldiers carrying something large and heavy hurry forward. Mai steps back, presses herself into the wall as if trying to become stone, as they unwrap the thing and throw it in front of her.

Even with all her years of practice, Mai cannot stop horror gripping her features as Zuko stares up at her. His eyes are glassy. The rolls of cloth suppressed it, but now an unholy stench is filling the small space. Mai feels dizzy. Against her will or control, her gaze wanders down to the wound that ravages his chest. She is lighter and lighter, unaware that she is swaying on her feet.

Azula’s too-wide smile grows and grows as she watches. Mai knows that this is what Azula wants, a reaction, but even so she cannot stop herself. She looks at the monster standing before her and would give anything for a knife.

“You don’t belong here, behind bars,” Azula says sweetly, almost coos. “You made a mistake, and I came here to show you that. I’ll give you a second chance. You want robes and a title, don’t you? You want jewelry and flowers and the world at your feet? That was all you ever wanted, wasn’t it? I’ve been crowned Fire Lord, Mai. You can still be Fire Lady.”

Mai’s eyes burn into Azula’s. The demon before her is looking at her expectantly, smile more natural now, something closer to her old self. She looks as if she actually expects Mai to consider it, to say yes. And the sheer gall of that smile makes Mai’s stomach twist a thousand times stronger than the smell of the corpse on the floor. She let that _thing_ touch her. She has heard this poison whispered to her before, found it _appealing._

She is shaking. The tremors are probably not noticeable to Azula, but to Mai it feels like she is standing through an earthquake. She desperately wishes for a blade again, this time for her own benefit.

“The only reason I would ever be with you again is to slide a knife into your neck,” she says, and her voice does not shake. She is as cold as ice and as firm as steel, though rage burns through her when Azula’s smile only widens.

“And here I’m being so generous. Are you sure you don’t want to kneel and ask my forgiveness? You’ve gotten on your knees for me plenty of times before.”

Ohh, how Mai wishes she could throw fire like Azula, have anger sear through her lungs and throat and come out a physical thing. She would kill them all, tear them apart with her bare hands. It is so very hard to contain her anger. The shaking of her hands is only getting worse.

“Go home and fuck your father,” she hisses through clenched teeth, and at last that scrubs the damnable smirk from _Fire Lord Azula’s_ face. Instead there is a mask that Mai knows all too well, the look of fury suppressed. How many times has she seen that on Azula’s face? It doesn’t matter. Mai is far too cold to feel fear any longer. All she knows is hate.

“It should please you to know your family is still alive and well,” Azula says through stiff lips. “Maybe they’ll be joining you here soon. Enjoy your gift.”

She turns on her heel and strides from the cell, and Mai drops her gaze at last. She hears the clang of metal and the jangling of keys as she is locked in once more, but all she can look at is Zuko’s blank, staring face.

He’s cold when she bends down to touch him.


	23. Chapter 23

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Azutara, hurt/comfort-ish, post-canon.

Katara knows it’s very late when she wakes. Even if she can’t see the moon, she can still _feel_ its pull, very slightly, the water in her veins responding to its celestial master. It’s not immediately obvious what awoke her, but she doesn’t feel too tired. She stretches her arms out and then realizes that she’s a little cold. She turns her head to discover that she’s alone. The furnace of a being she’s grown used to sleeping beside is nowhere to be found.

The sheets are cool, too, so Azula’s been up for a while. Katara sits up and glances around the room. It’s dim, but her eyes adjust quickly. Nowhere does she see the princess.

Azula’s insomnia is a reality of their life together, so Katara has become accustomed to these midnight awakenings. If they were anywhere else, she might roll over and return to sleep. But this is their first night back in the capital in years. Katara has seen the stress build up over the course of the day. Seeing Zuko and Mai and their tiny daughter was surely already a taxing load on the princess, but the place itself seems to hang on Azula like a shroud. These aren’t Azula’s old rooms—Katara specifically asked for guest lodgings—but nonetheless the palace is the palace. Katara watched the way her golden eyes would flick about, and even her sarcastic smiles were fewer and farther between.

So Katara rises in search of her lover. Azula isn’t on the balcony, though Katara hovers there for a second to stare across the sleeping city and let the moonlight wash over her. Then she turns inside again, but Azula isn’t in the washroom, nor is she in the antechamber. Worry begins to form in Katara’s stomach for real. Surely the princess wouldn’t have run off in the night, would she?

Katara opens the doors again, wishing she had Azula’s ability to light a room with a flick of her wrist. She’s just considering going for candles when she slides open a closet door. There’s a bundle of white linen there that she mistook for laundry the first time. Now she recognizes it for what it is: a figure with her knees pulled to her chest, the spare sheet wrapped around her.

“Azula?” Katara reaches out, very carefully, to touch a white-wrapped shoulder. Azula flinches quite badly, but it’s a mild reaction by comparison. Katara’s gotten burns before.

“…Go back to bed,” a slightly muffled voice rasps. Katara can think of many people who might find this amusing, her acquaintances of the Earth Kingdom at the top of the list. Fire Lord Ozai’s right hand, the girl who brought down Ba Sing Se, now twenty years old, hiding under a blanket in the dark. But Katara just feels sort of sick. The leaden weight of this place sits on her shoulders too, and she sees that Azula is shaking.

“Have you slept at all?” It must be very early morning by now, Katara thinks. Her eyes burn a little, but Azula is more important than bed.

“Don’t trouble yourself with it.” There’s an edge to Azula’s voice, spite. It’s a good sign, Katara has learned. The scariest times are those when the princess cannot even manage to put up her barriers.

“I’m already up. I may as well sit with you.” Katara lowers herself onto the floor, between the sheet-covered Azula and the closet door. She reaches her arm around Azula’s shoulder and hugs her close. Azula does not resist the touch. She is very warm, as always, and Katara is comfortable there beside her. For a while they sit in silence. When Azula isn’t shaking so much, Katara tentatively brings her hand up to pull the sheet from Azula’s head. She lets it slide down to her shoulders without objection. Beneath it Azula stares straight ahead, her eyes cold and lightless, her mouth set in a grimace. She hasn’t been crying, at least. Katara gently strokes her fingers through the silky dark hair.

“ _Don’t._ ” It is almost a snarl. Katara quickly draws back, lets her hand fall around Azula’s shoulder again. Silence again.

They have probably sat ten or fifteen minutes when Azula speaks once more.

“So good to be home.” She spits something like a laugh. Her face molds itself into a smile that is not a smile at all. Still she stares straight ahead. “It smells like him. Zuko looks like him.”

“We can stay somewhere else…at an inn out in the city?” Katara squeezes Azula’s shoulder and earns no rebuke.

“What does it matter? It’s everywhere,” Azula says indifferently. “It’s all in my head, _right_?” Another sneer, another bitter laugh.

This doesn’t seem to be the time to say that it’s not the same everywhere, that Azula is making process, that healing takes a lifetime anyway.

“What would you like, then?” It’s a dangerous question. Katara knows that.

“What I wanted—” Azula pauses, and Katara wonders what she’s thinking of. A throne built from the bones of the Earth Kingdom? Her own brother dead at her feet? Or something older and simpler, like the vision of a happy family and a real childhood? “What I wanted became impossible a long time ago. You know that.” There is an implicit barb there, and Katara does not miss the accusation that it was she who tore Azula’s desires away. But she does not feel guilt about it.

She does know that. She knows all of this. All of their time together has been about picking up pieces. They are searching for something to bring the princess back to herself. Katara wonders frequently if their relationship, if Azula’s life itself, isn’t running on borrowed time.

“I love you.” Katara so wishes she had the right words. She wishes none of this was necessary. In some selfish corner of her mind, she wishes she’d stayed asleep. But it’s a small corner, and she wraps her arms tighter around Azula.

“Thank you, Father,” Azula says, angry and sarcastic, and Katara does recoil. Then Azula takes a deep breath in and out and closes her eyes.

“I’m sorry.” Her apologies are always clipped, formal, and cold. Katara has learned that those are the genuine apologies. Outward remorse from Azula seems to be invariably an act.

“It’s fine.” Katara shifts, and Azula turns to look at her for the first time, golden eyes wide. But Katara isn’t getting up, just leaning in, resting her head on Azula’s shoulder. It’s comfortable there and she lets her eyes drift closed.

“Stay with me,” Azula says.

“I will,” Katara promises, but the _always_ stumbles somewhere along the way and leaves a bitter taste in her mouth.


	24. Chapter 24

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Modern AU, Maizula. Technically a sequel to my ficlet "Faking It," but reading that isn't really essential.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> It's my birthday, so some kudos or comments would be a nice present.

“You’re _sure_ you want to do this?” It’s probably the third or fourth time she’s asked, but Mai wants to be sure. She still doesn’t know how she feels about this whole thing, but they’re doing it for Azula’s benefit anyway.

“Yes,” Azula snaps. Her eyes are impatient and narrowed when Mai glances up. “And I’m tired of you asking that.”

“You’ll stop me if you’re uncomfortable?”

“Whatever you want.” Mai doesn’t have to be looking to know Azula rolled her eyes.

“No, whatever _you_ want.” Mai sits up and frowns at Azula. She doesn’t seem to be taking this seriously. Mai wants to ask again whether they’re really doing this. Maybe if she pisses Azula off enough, they’ll just stop anyway. But then, Azula has her own ways of getting payback, and they’re unpleasant enough that Mai doesn’t go out of her way to incur her wrath.

“Must it always be about me? I feel so selfish.”

“Azula, I’m serious.”

“Oh, I never should have told you, should I? Just get your tongue down there and get it over with if you’re so worried.” Azula waves a hand impatiently. It really doesn’t help that she looks so damn attractive anyway, lolled back against the headrest with her hair spilling over her shoulders and her shirt open to show lace and white skin. It doesn’t help that Mai _wants_ to kiss every inch of exposed flesh. But now that desire is tainted by something sick in the pit of her stomach.

Mai rubs her forehead. “What will you say if you want me to stop?”

“Fuck me, Mai, harder, harder,” Azula sing-songs, her eyes cold and her lips twisted up into a sneer. A shiver runs down Mai’s spine. Yes, she’s dreamed about Azula saying such things to her in earnest, and she doesn’t know whether having them mockingly thrown her way is arousing or humiliating.

“Azula—”

“Laundry. Fine. That’s the stupid word. Now do it before I have to do it myself.”

Mai’s thought about _that,_ too, but now is not the time for indulging in fantasy. Still a little reluctant, Mai retrieves their makeshift blindfold from the sheets and secures it about Azula’s eyes.

“Are you okay?”

An impatient sigh is the only response, which Mai supposes is a yes. She leans down at last to brush the shirt from Azula’s shoulders, and then to press kisses against her skin. Azula is warm under her lips, and she smells of ash and flowers. The sickening combination of cigarettes and perfume used to make Mai sick to her stomach, but now she can’t get enough of it. She lets her teeth out, bites a little, frees Azula’s breasts from their confines. Not flawless, no, thanks to the tiny white scars there, but beautiful. She tastes like heaven, and she moans when Mai sucks at her nipple. The sound washes over Mai and leaves her wet.

“You’re so beautiful,” she murmurs into Azula’s skin. She lets her hands play with brown nipples and the skin about them while her mouth journeys lower. Azula’s stomach is smooth and taut, rising and falling in tune with her breath. Mai’s fingers pull down her pants and panties. Azula is clean-shaven, and her lips are glistening wet.

She tastes sweet. This flavor, too, is something that Mai has gradually become accustomed to. Now she laps like an eager little dog, letting Azula coat her tongue and mouth. Her fingers slip into Azula’s warmth and stroke her walls. Azula’s hips cant upward ever so slightly. Mai catches her clit between her lips. She plays with it, stroking it with her tongue, sucking, letting her teeth scrape it.

Azula is quite still. Mai pulls her head back a little.

“Are you doing all right?”

No response. Mai withdraws her fingers and sits up. “Azula?”

Still nothing. She sits there like a statue, legs spread, chest moving up and down. Mai’s stomach drops as she remembers the point of this stupid little exercise, and when she licks her fingers clean she doesn’t even have it in her to appreciate the taste.

She’s a little wary of touching Azula, but when she undoes the blindfold and pulls it away, Azula doesn’t react. The look on her face makes Mai feel sicker. Azula is perfectly blank. Her eyes are somewhere distant. It’s Mai’s fault.

“Azula,” she says, more urgently. No response. Mai sits there, unsure of what to do. She doesn’t want to raise her voice. “Shit.” Azula didn’t tell her what to do if this happened, and now she’s cursing herself for not asking. She should have asked.

She doesn’t want to hit Azula, and pouring water on her seems like a bad idea, so Mai takes a breath.

“ _Azula!_ ”

Azula jolts a little bit. Her eyes refocus, wide and darting for an instant before they lock onto Mai’s face. She stares, seeming to look through Mai, but slowly they regain their ordinary look. Mai sits back, feeling quite miserable.

“Well, that was useless,” Azula says breezily.

“Why didn’t you _say_ it?” Questioning Azula is generally useless, but Mai can’t stop herself. Her hands pull at the sheets in frustration.

Azula just blinks.

“Did you enjoy the beginning, at least?” Mai lies down on her back and stares up at the ceiling. She shouldn’t be thinking about her technique at a time like this.

“Oh? It was fine. That’s not the point.”

“That’s not the point?” Mai twists her head around to look at her. “You told me you wanted to see if you could enjoy it. You said you wanted to try—dammit, Azula!”

Azula is smiling.

“Well, what was the point, then?” Getting frustrated is also a useless endeavor where Azula is concerned, but, God, if she isn’t the most infuriating person in the world.

“Not important. I thought I was stronger than that.”

“Stronger?” Familiar guilt and nausea take hold of Mai. She wishes she could take Azula in her arms and shake sense into her. She wishes Azula would stop smiling. She never should have agreed to this idiotic game in the first place. “It’s not weakness, Azula! And it’s not your fault. It’s an involuntary reaction, for fuck’s sake—”

“Go get me some water and stop moaning,” Azula interrupts. “Unless you’d rather I give you something real to cry about.”

Mai goes, but the feeling doesn’t go away.


	25. Chapter 25

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Maizula, modern AU, proposals. This is one of my favorite pieces to come out of Femslash February, so I hope you all like it!

The first time, the words aren’t even all the way out of her mouth before Azula has answered. Her eyes are wide, almost angry, and she glances about the room. Mai lit candles, bought flowers, wore Azula’s favorite lingerie. When Azula asked what the occasion was, Mai handwaved it as their anniversary.

(It is, but that’s not important.)

“Don’t ask again,” Azula says. She isn’t angry. She doesn’t even seem upset at all. She’s just cold. She rises from the bed and stares around at the decorated room, her mouth silently forming words Mai neither understands nor recognizes.

“Azula,” Mai says. There’s a pit in her stomach and the perfect evening is over. Azula strides across the room and fetches her clothes from the floor, pulling them on. She puts out a wayward candle with her bare fingers and just the sight of it hurts. She hasn’t done that in a while, and now it’s all Mai’s fault.

“Have a nice night, _darling,_ ” Azula purrs, and she’s out the door. Mai stands alone in their apartment. She often wonders whether Azula has another one, whether Azula has other lovers, whether Mai is one among many.

The ring weighs impossibly in her hand as Mai settles onto the bed and contemplates a night ruined.

* * *

The second time, Azula lets Mai finish the sentence. They’re in public this time; Mai thought trying the opposite might work. For a few seconds Azula just stares coldly before her lips curl into a thin and utterly humorless smile.

“As I recall, I told you not to ask me again.”

“It’s a sapphire. You like sapphires, don’t you?”

“You think I need you to buy me gems? I’ve had lunches that have cost more than that trinket.” Azula’s smile is a little warmer. She usually looks pleased when she’s insulting Mai. It’s one of her more insufferable qualities, though admittedly she has many.

“A no to the ring, then. And the question?”

“I told you no.”

“You didn’t. You said not to ask again.” It is stupid to hope. It is stupid to waste so much of her life on the woman sitting across from her. Mai knows that. But she has always lived in stasis. At least with Azula, she can pretend she’s being pulled along in the current. Not healthy, but poison is the only thing keeping her alive. It has been years now, and Mai doesn’t think she can be cut away without bleeding out in the process.

“As I’m saying now.”

“Can I have a reason?”

“You can have whatever reason you want, but I’m not giving you one.” Azula smirks. Mai feels her lover’s hand on her thigh under the table, and the discussion ends there.

* * *

 

The third time, Azula isn’t sober, and it’s mostly an accident. Mai regrets it before the question is fully out of her mouth, but adding “never mind” to the end of a marriage proposal seems to be bad form, so she lets it go. They’re in their apartment again, wine in hand and clothes long since lost.

Azula just stares at her again, but she doesn’t reject Mai out of hand. Mai wonders why she bothered asking. A drunk Azula’s promises don’t mean anything, and it’s fucked up to take advantage of her like that. Probably it was the alcohol that made Mai ask anyway.

“Do you think my mother knew what she had done when she married him? Do you think she knew how it would end?”

The question seems to be rhetorical, so Mai is silent.

“My father wanted to put her in a cage, Mai. He wanted ownership. He failed. She got away. So then he locked me in it instead. And you would too. No, _don’t_ deny it. You want me pinned down.” Azula’s face is almost dreamy. Her eyes are distant. “You want to look at me and know I’m yours. You want to put a ring on my finger so you own my hand. No, Mai. Never again.”

There is a lump in Mai’s throat. Is that what she wants? A dead butterfly affixed to a board? She wants something tangible, but Azula is fire and smoke.

“I am my own prisoner,” Azula says. Her smile disappears; her nostrils flare. “If you ask again, you will regret it.”

Mai doesn’t ask again.


	26. Chapter 26

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Maizula, canonverse, warning for self-harm. This is the second-to-last piece from Femslash February. Soon I'll be all caught up, and then it'll be bye-bye to daily updates.

She’d taken to the palace because it was weird and sort of lonely to be the only person at home, even with the servants for company, but it didn’t seem to matter when she ended up alone anyway. Zuko had gone off to some meeting, and so there she sat, sitting on his balcony and wishing the sun would stop on its course and the world would stand still forever.

She heard footsteps and had a guess at who it was. She closed her eyes. Not now. Her grip on the stiletto in her hand tightened.

“You look lonely.”

“Please, Azula, leave me alone.” As if _please_ ever worked with the princess. As if she didn’t just take what she wanted anyway.

The footsteps stopped. Mai opened her eyes to see Azula gracefully seating herself against the wall. Mai shook her head and then closed her eyes again. The world was too bright. She didn’t want to look at the sunset or the palace gardens or the natural stone wall that surrounded the city. She liked the dark and quiet peace of the inside of her head.

“And I expected you’d be more chipper. You’re away from your parents, you’ve proven yourself with all your work in the Earth Kingdom, and you have my brother wrapped around your finger. Isn’t it enough for you?”

Mai’d thought these things herself. She’d ended up wondering that if she wasn’t happy now, she probably wouldn’t ever be. It wasn’t the most palatable thought. She tried to focus on how she felt when she was spending time with Zuko, but the scads of time in between made it harder and harder. With their mission in the Earth Kingdom complete, she was left restless and aimless once more.

But the absence of her parents to watch over her gave her a certain dangerous freedom too.

“I suppose I’m too selfish for my own good.”

“Show me your arm,” Azula said.

“What?” Mai’s head jerked up, forcing her to blink again in the sudden brightness of the evening. How did Azula know? How had she known where to find Mai? How did she know what to ask? How did she always know?

“Show me,” Azula said again, and then her fingers were on Mai’s shoulder. Her touch was electric. Mai managed not to jump, but she offered her arm to stop Azula touching her.

There were fingers brushing back her sleeve, fingers gently exploring the new scabs and dried blood. Azula was so warm. She could be so careful when she wanted to be, but like everything else about her, it wasn’t real. Her interests lay in inflicting pain. She was only ever gentle to make the blows hurt worse.

Mai closed her eyes and told herself this and pretended it didn’t feel good.

There were lips brushing her skin.

“Azula, that’s not—we’re not—” Mai didn’t know what she was trying to say, but the warning was clear in her voice. She tried to her arm back, but Azula’s grip was unwavering. They weren’t in the Earth Kingdom anymore, and they weren’t girls anymore, and—"I’m with Zuko."

"It doesn’t mean anything, remember?” Azula’s voice was amused. “Just practice. Like the first time we kissed.” When she’d finished speaking, her tongue traced the lacerations along Mai’s skin, hot and wet, lapping up blood. She was a vampire.

Mai’s heart was going too fast. Stress or nothingness. Azula wasn’t, would never be, a remedy. She remembered the stupid kiss, from when she’d been a stupid child. She never should have believed what Azula said then. She shouldn’t believe what Azula said now.

“Leave me alone,” she said once more. Her voice was colder this time. The lips pulled back from her skin, and then Azula let go of her arm. She heard the rustle of cloth as the princess stood, and then something dropped into Mai’s lap.

“You can always come and find me next time,” Azula drawled. “It’s more fun to have someone else cut you up, isn’t it?”

Footsteps again. Mai heard doors open and close before she opened her eyes and realized the thing in her lap was a bandage.


	27. Chapter 27

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Azutara, argument, last piece from Femslash February!

Amusement is not the correct response, but Azula can’t stop smiling. She isn’t really listening that much to the words being thrown her direction. There is a weird buzzing in her head. This is uncomfortable, and she hates that. It would be a simple thing to laugh and turn her back.

Her father’s rages were usually cold. He was interested in keeping it below the surface. Anger, like all else, Azula had learned, was a weapon best kept hidden. Outward fury was acceptable only to intimidate, only as a show of force. Never as a show of vulnerability.

Katara’s eyes are narrowed and overly bright. Her voice has a shrill edge to it. She’s leaning forward and her fists are clenched at her sides. It’s so ugly. Doesn’t she know how obvious it is? Doesn’t she care how silly she looks, so invested, wearing her heart on her sleeve like _Zuko?_ Azula watches and can’t help but feel disdain, and that keeps the smile in place on her face even as the buzzing grows louder and louder in her ears.

“—and I want you to tell me why it’s worth my or _anyone’s_ time to care about you when all you do is take and take and _take!_ ”

It has been so long since Azula has felt like this that she has forgotten she has ever felt it before at all. There is anger bubbling in her stomach and her throat, but more than that there is the desire to defend herself.

With Ozai she shut down. His criticisms cut through her more effectively than any weapon could have. His words were always the essential truth. She was _wrong,_ he was _right,_ and she needed to change. She could not argue against that.

But now, as Katara faces her with this foolish, naked anger, Azula does not want to crumple. She feels stings at the edges of her pride. She is _right,_ Katara is _wrong,_ and she is weak and stupid for letting any of this get to her at all. Azula wants to throw fire, to end the argument the best way she knows how, to _laugh_ and walk away and show the water peasant how small she is. To end this as she has ended all else.

But infuriatingly, horribly, frustratingly, she won’t let herself. Some part of her craves approval. Some part of her cares about what the woman in front of her is saying. She is so good at burning bridges that it is difficult not to set this one alight, but Azula forces herself to stay, even if her smile remains in place and her ears buzz and her hands shake.

She remembers, with a jolt, what this reminds her of, who the last person to make her feel this way was, and the reminder of her mother is so sudden and unwelcome that there are tears forming in her eyes too.

_Stupid whining pathetic little—_

Everything Katara calls good goes against every instinct Azula possesses. Her voice and her father’s mingle in her head, taunting her. Weak, weak, weak.

Katara is waiting for an answer, she realizes eventually. Azula diverts her eyes and contorts her face, and with an effort her smile disappears. She opens her mouth and speaks with utmost care, detached, distant.

“Have you considered that I don’t know how to do anything else?”


	28. Chapter 28

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Maizula, modern AU, blue silk.

Mai’s lips slide gently across the silk and lace. She likes the feel of the fabric on her mouth, so soft, even smoother than the pale skin it covers. The blue looks so beautiful against Azula’s skin that she can’t stop looking, the contrast where white becomes mottled under lace and then turns into blue silk. It doesn’t really matter how often she sees Azula like this; it’s lovely each time.

“All I have to do is strip and you lose your fucking mind.” Azula’s reading a textbook, her ever-present cigarette in hand. She’s paying more attention to her schoolwork than the girl whose mouth explores her hips and thighs. Mai isn’t insulted. As usual, what Azula wants goes.

“Well, I’ve never been with anyone who, you know, wore lingerie.” Mai traces the jutting outline of Azula’s hipbone. The blue silk is lighter there where the light shines on it, and darker as it sweeps toward the valley between her thighs. Mai can see the outline of Azula’s lips through the underwear. Her fingers stroke, very gently, teasing. She leans in to suck the skin just peeping out from the blue.

“Zuko didn’t wear thigh-highs for you? For shame.” Azula turns a page and smiles. Mai grudgingly follows suit.

“He wouldn’t have looked as good in them.” It’s the truth, so it shouldn’t make her feel guilty. “Nobody would.”

“You flatterer.”

“I’ve never seen you in not-nice underwear.” At the beginning of their relationship, it didn’t surprise Mai, but as it’s gone on, she’s wondered about it.

The silk is gradually dampening under her fingers. She continues her gentle strokes and kisses a trail from Azula’s belly button down to the hem.

“Don’t own any.” Azula shrugs. “Always a performance, you know?”

“Doesn’t it bother you, dressing up?” Mai’s middle finger finds Azula’s clit through the cloth.

“I like dressing up for _you_ ,” Azula says. Mai’s eyes move upward to meet her lover’s. Azula smiles, not a smirk, but something a little colder, something a little more true. “You appreciate it.”

Something flutters in Mai’s throat.

“But when they can’t be washed, I throw them out. So you’d better take these off before I stain them, shouldn’t you?” Azula drawls. Her thighs creep further apart in invitation.

Mai tries not to but can’t really help wondering how much of this is an act, a repeat performance, as her fingers pull the silk away and her mouth descends to cover Azula instead.


	29. Chapter 29

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Urzai, pre-canon.

She has grown up surrounded by luxury, but this is overwhelming. She stands as still as a column while the tailors move about her. Never do the needles prick her skin, but every time they insert a pin, they murmur soft apologies. She closes her eyes. Brocade and silk and gold and silver thread, the most elaborate embroidery she has ever seen, come to life under her fingers. These are her wedding clothes. In a month–no, just mere weeks now–she will wear these and stand with the prince and utter words to change her life.

She thinks of that as the tailors go about their work. Servants offer her tea and cakes and anything else she desires, but they are poor company. Ursa supposes that Fire Lady Ilah would be overseeing the preparations were she not long dead. As it is, she is quite alone, with nothing but her thoughts to distract her as the hours tick by and the tailors make their minute adjustments. The rich air of the palace is thick with incense, and she lets her eyes close and her mind drift. She thinks of her wedding and of the man who will become her husband. Even in imagination, his eyes consume her. His lips are fiery against hers, his hands searing when they knot in her hair. She remembers these touches and becomes too uncomfortably warm in the thick layers of her beautiful garments. Shame sinks its claws into her as she remembers the things she let him do to her.

He could break the engagement. He could destroy her without lifting a finger. That fear haunts her. 

When it’s surely been two hours with no sign of the end nearing, her head is beginning to ache. Her request for a recess isn’t all the way out of her mouth before the tailors are nodding and bowing, carefully lifting the heavy garments off of her. She leaves the chambers and wanders aimlessly. The palace’s labyrinthine confines are alien to her, and she is wishing she had asked a servant to accompany her when she finds her way to a garden, open to the sky. She wanders among the flowers, the fresh air easing the throbbing in her head.

Soon enough she thinks she should return. The scent of the flowers and the sky follows her as she wanders back down the halls. It occurs to her that she doesn’t know the way. She prepares to call for a servant, but that smaller fear is eclipsed by a much greater fear when she feels a strong hand take her by the shoulder. 

Before she can cry for help or even orient herself, her captor has effortlessly spun her. Ursa feels her back connect with the wall, but gently, lacking force. When her cry finally escapes her, it is weak, little more than a breath.

She sees his face and fear leaves her, though her heart still races. She can’t stop the blush that colors her cheeks. The last time she saw him…

“Prince Ozai,” she says. His body is much too close to hers. His smell is familiar, a thousand times headier than incense. She can feel the heat of him in the hand on her shoulder.

“My lady Ursa.” His voice is low and husky. She thinks of things she shouldn’t. Her heart refuses to slow. She stares into his golden eyes and forgets to blink. “Did you think to come to the palace without seeing me?”

She doesn’t have an answer. Of course she wanted to see him. She has thought of little else since that night. And perhaps she desperately hoped not to see him, to keep her thoughts pure.

“Forgive me,” she says.

“You’re forgiven.” 

He presses himself closer to her. Their bodies are touching. Her back is braced against the wall. A servant, a guard, any noble could come around the corner and see them. They are not married, and she should not let him do this, and this is wrong.

His mouth finds her ear. She shudders inadvertently, not from horror but something far more deadly.

“Your Highness, this is improper…” She needs to stop him. She has already given in once. How weak can she be?

“You make propriety _so difficult,”_  he breathes. It tickles her earlobe and other places too. She closes her eyes and chews her lip. He moves to her cheek and down to her throat. “How am I to wait a month? I want you _here_ and _now.”_

She thinks she wants that too, but she can’t, can’t allow herself to even dream of such a thing, though it’s hard to remember why when he sucks at her pulse, when his knee pushes insistently between her thighs.

“No,” she finally manages, and she doesn’t know which of them is more surprised. She braces her hands against his chest. He lingers at her throat and pulls back. There is something in his eyes she hasn’t seen there before.

“No?” he repeats, and his voice is different too.

“Patience, Prince Ozai,” she says, knowing that she shouldn’t speak to him this way, waiting for consequences. “I need to return to the tailors.”

The odd look on his face vanishes, and he smirks as he straightens. He seems to take up the whole hallway. She had forgotten how tall he is.

“Very well. I’ll wait.” Then he strides away, as quickly as he had come.

Only when her heart is finally slowing, the licentious poison leaving her, does it occur to Ursa that she really should have asked him for help finding the chamber again.


	30. Chapter 30

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Maizulee, canonverse, basically smut.

Mai’s lap wasn’t the most comfortable seat, not when her hipbones dug into Azula’s thighs, but it was a suitable throne nonetheless. Azula watched Mai’s cheeks redden, her hair stick to her increasingly sweaty skin, her lips move to form words she’d never say aloud. More than the resulting friction as she gave her hips another steady roll, _that_ was what aroused the princess. Mai fragile and desperate and panting, hovering on the edge.

The plea in Mai’s eyes was clear, though the steely look on her face showed she still had enough pride not to ask aloud. She wanted Azula to close the distance between them again, to kiss her, to ravish the skin exposed by her torn and burned collar. But the princess just let her lips curl upward, one eyebrow cocked; she wasn’t done enjoying the view. 

A gentle touch on her back made Azula stiffen, but she knew who it was before she turned to look. Ty Lee wore only a playful smile. Her hair was unbraided and flowing in waves about her torso, and Azula was gripped with the urge to wind her hands in it and pull the acrobat closer.

Before she could make to stand or even shift, Mai seized her attention again with tight hands on her waist and lips on her neck. It was an impudent play, but Azula couldn’t deny the sensations fluttering through her as Mai left soft kisses along her windpipe.

“Mai–” Azula started, a warning clear in her voice, but then Ty Lee was leaning down to join in. Azula could feel Ty’s breasts, soft against her shoulders, and her hair, softer still, but Ty Lee was anything but when her teeth plied the skin at the back of Azula’s neck. The rest of the princess’s words dissolved into a quiet hiss. Her head fell back; her eyelids fluttered; and she wondered whether they’d _planned_ this.

“Yes, Highness?” Mai murmured. Her breath was cool against the wet patch of skin.

Azula tried to find a suitably fearsome response, but Ty Lee found an especially sensitive spot and dug her teeth in, and it was all Azula could do not to let the moan escape her. She was the desperate one now, grinding her hips against Mai’s and finding it woefully unsatisfying. 

“–regret this,” she managed. Ty Lee was sucking, and Azula’s clit was aching, and she was going to make them pay for tormenting her like this. 

“But you’re so lovely when you’re desperate,” Mai said. At the sound of her own words, Azula’s anger burned through her so fiercely that they could surely feel it on her skin. 

She could dislodge them; she knew that. But she did not. Mai joined Ty Lee in biting and sucking, and the princess let her hands clamp onto Mai’s shoulders, her fingernails digging bloody trenches with every touch they left on her.


	31. Chapter 31

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Urzai, jealousy, warnings for manipulative/controlling behavior.

This place is much too vast for the people who occupy it. Ursa has wandered the corridors for weeks now, but her knowledge of them seems unimproved. It would be an easy thing to lose herself therein, she thinks. There are always servants and guards just a cry away, but the sheer size of the palace makes it feel uninhabited. There is a constant pressure, a crushing atmosphere, as if the walls themselves are watching her.

Her father-in-law she sees little of. The Fire Lord is a presence only at meals, it seems. Ursa cannot honestly say she regrets the distance. But her ladies-in-waiting are skittish and no good company at all; even when she tries to talk to them, their answers are abbreviated. Her only companion is her husband, and Ozai is frequently busy. Ursa feels the outside world slipping away. She writes letters she never intends to send just for someone to speak to.

So when she meets Iroh properly, it’s a breath of fresh air. He is animated and open and warm, everything that this place is not. His voice breaks through the silence and makes the palace feel more like home. She finds herself seeking him out, confiding in him instead of the cold deafness of her unsent letters. They walk together, and then she needn’t fear getting lost.

“How have you been adjusting, my lady?” he asks her one day.

“It’s lonely,” she says, and then wishes she could take it back. Such an ungrateful thought should not be the first thing from her lips. And the implication that Ozai is not company enough is one that would never cross her mind, let alone spill from her mouth.

But Iroh is smiling sympathetically. “I understand. Of course, it’s easier for me, having grown up here, but whenever I return after a time away, it’s hard.”

“I miss my parents,” she says, and the admission makes her bite her lip to hold back tears. She’s fine as long as she doesn’t think about them, but once she does… “I have no friends here.” There are the noblewomen of the court, but Ursa doesn’t consider that to be friendship. They smile and spend time with her because of her status. So much of this new life is like that.

“You have me, Lady Ursa,” Iroh says. His hands wrap around her own, and his warmth is different from her husband’s. His smile is so kind that she cannot help but smile in return.

“ _Ursa.”_

She recognizes the voice, but not the tone, and looks over her shoulder. Her husband stands at the end of the hall. His face is quite blank, and she doesn’t know quite what to think.

“Brother,” Iroh says. He releases Ursa’s hand and she brings it to her chest. Suddenly she feels very conscious of her limbs. 

“Iroh,” Ozai says, and there is no mistaking his tone now. Ursa’s smile fades a little. Why should he be angry? “What are you doing?”

“I was showing the lady Ursa to the observatory,” Iroh says, still pleasant, still smiling, even as Ozai approaches them with his face like a mask.

“How lucky she is to have such a knowledgeable escort,” Ozai says. He is tall enough to stand over them both.

“Not at all! I am lucky for the pleasure of her company.” Iroh bows, and when his smile widens his eyes squint, and he is so undeniably genuine that Ursa can’t help but softly giggle.

“Surely Fire Lord Azulon will be missing the pleasure of _your_ company.” Ozai’s voice is low and quiet. He places a hand on Ursa’s shoulder. She can feel the heat of it through her robes, hotter than usual.

Iroh pauses a moment, looking between the two of them, before his smile broadens again. “Of course. I’ll give the two of you your privacy.” And after another bow, he’s gone.

Ursa is still looking after him when Ozai grips her other shoulder too and turns her to face him. He’s rougher than she’s accustomed to, and when she looks up his face has lost its mask. His eyes are burning.

“I don’t want you to talk to him,” he says.

“Ozai?” She doesn’t know what to make of this. What is that look in his eyes? Why is he angry?

“You let him touch you,” he practically spits, and clarity comes to her.

“Milord, are you…jealous?” Heat comes to her cheeks. Of course she shouldn’t have let Iroh touch her, even as innocent a touch as holding her hand. She hadn’t thought of what it might look like.

“Should I be?” One hand leaves her shoulder. He cups her about the waist and brings them together. His fingers drift lower, explore territory that should be left behind closed doors. Ursa’s blush deepens, but she can’t ask him to stop, not given her indiscretion. How foolish can she be? 

“No! Never,” she says, as vehemently as she can manage. She thinks she can _feel_ him, under all the cloth. They are much too close together. “We were simply talking.”

“You’re mine,” he says. The fire still won’t leave his gaze. She doesn’t realize it’s not a question.

“Of course. Only and forever.” Her words spill over each other. Then he lifts her and kisses her. His mouth sears, their teeth collide, and his tongue forces its way between her lips. He holds it long, too long, and when he finally pulls back she is gasping for air.

“I don’t want you to talk to him,” he says again.

She thinks of letters to nobody with a sinking heart. The stifling atmosphere of the palace presses in around her. But she wants, more than anything, for him to smile and be normal again.

“…As you wish.”


	32. Chapter 32

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Modern AU, Maizula. I quite like this piece! It's unusually fluffy for me.

Mai hadn’t meant to fall asleep, but when her mother slid open the door and called her name, she woke with a start and realized she had anyway. Her head was still throbbing, her forehead burning, and even the weight of her blankets didn’t stop her shivering. She wanted to close her eyes and try to slip back into her dreams, but her mother’s insistent tone tugged at her even in her weakened state. She craned her head upright as best she could.

“What is it?” Talking hurt. Her throat was sore.

“You have a visitor,” Michi said, folding her hands carefully in front of her. Mai didn’t know how to interpret her mother’s tone and was too tired to make a great effort out of it.

“What? No, tell them I can’t…”

Mai’s voice died away as a second figure joined her mother in the doorway. Azula was shorter than Michi, but she seemed to dominate the room. Her hair was shining, her lips their usual red, and her uniform and bag indicated that she’d just come from school.

“Azula,” Mai managed to croak. The other girl smiled and raised her eyebrows. Mai didn’t think she could put up with Azula in her weakened state. She was hard enough to handle when Mai was well.

“How considerate of her to visit,” Michi said, and she was giving her usual pinched smile, the kind that meant satisfaction rather than happiness.

Azula strode across the room without invitation and slid the chair from Mai’s desk over beside the bed. She seated herself there. She had never been over before, and Mai was suddenly very aware of her room, of the dirty socks on the floor and her old notebooks piled by the window. She had imagined Azula coming over many times, but never like this.

Azula aimed to surprise.

“Please make yourself at home. I’ll make some tea,” Michi said.

“That will be fine,” Azula said. She crossed her legs imperiously and only looked around a second later to catch the taken-aback look on Michi’s face. Azula just smiled and raised her eyebrows as if unaware of her own rudeness. If she had been feeling better, and if her mother wouldn’t have castigated her for it, Mai would have laughed.

“Keep that up and she won’t like you,” Mai said when her mother had gone. 

“There’s a pity. As if dislike would stop her from groveling. They might as well put her picture beside ‘social climber’ in the dictionary.”

Azula leaned back in the chair and looked around. She seemed too big for the space, too beautiful. Mai wished she was better just so she could reach out and touch her…kiss her.

“Why’d you come?” She had never even told Azula her address, but she wasn’t surprised Azula found her. There was little Azula could do to surprise her.

“I wanted to see if you were dying,” Azula sighed. She was paying her fingernails more attention than Mai.

“Don’t tell me you care?” Mai winced. This talking was bad on her throat, and she was getting raspier by the second.

“I just wanted to know if I need to train Ty Lee in the art of sarcasm.”

“Are you trying to say you’d miss me?”

“Why don’t you tell me, Mai, since you like to say you’re so good at reading me?” Azula looked up. Her eyes were bright, amused, and Mai felt heat that had nothing to do with her fever creep into her skin.

Michi pushed the door open again. Mai turned quickly onto her side, feeling like she’d been caught doing something repulsive. She heard the clink of cups as her mother set the tray down on Mai’s desk.

“I’ll leave you to it. Azula, thank you for coming over. I’m sure Mai appreciates the company.”

Mai certainly _didn’t_ appreciate being addressed as if she wasn’t there.

“It’s the least I can do.”

The sound of the door again meant that Michi was gone once more.

 “And it’s not every day that one gets the chance to see Mai bed-bound and flushed and sweaty,” Azula continued. Mai bit her lips to keep from laughing. Now she was really regretting being sick. She wondered if she was brave enough to ask Azula to join her under the covers. The other girl’s furnace-like heat would work wonders at keeping the chills away.

She wasn’t brave enough.

Azula transferred one of the cups to Mai’s bedside table before taking one for herself. She took a long sip, swallowed, and waited a few more seconds before speaking again.

“I brought you something.”

“What? Homework?” This caught Mai off guard.

“We’re in different classes.” Azula rolled her eyes. “I got you a present.”

The last time Azula had gotten her a present, it had been lingerie; the time before that, a collar. 

“Let me guess, a chastity belt?” Mai coughed and watched with mild amusement as Azula’s lip curled.

“Is everything about _sex_ with you, Mai?” 

That was rich coming from her, but before Mai could respond, Azula was opening her bag and pulling out a book. She held it up. When Mai caught sight of it, she was momentarily floored.

“Shuntaro Tanikawa?”

“You like his poems, don’t you?” Azula looked annoyed.

“…Yes,” Mai said honestly. She didn’t know what to say. “I didn’t know you knew.”

“I pay attention,” Azula said testily. She cracked the spine and began flipping through, but Mai wasn’t really paying attention. Her heart was fluttering. It was possibly the most thoughtful thing Azula had ever done for her. She felt like she needed to do something, but all she could do was lay in bed and try to stop the weird tingly emotion from spilling out of her.

“I thought you might like if I read to you.”

“I would like that very much.” Mai closed her eyes, suddenly very glad for her sickness, for whatever she had done to deserve this. She focused on the pleasant sound of Azula’s voice and wished she could stay like that forever.

“何の喩も要らぬお前のからだ   
口が口を封じる   
匂いのないすべる汗…”


	33. Chapter 33

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Urzai, canonverse.

Maybe it was a small thing, but it had been so long since she had been able to move freely that she was overjoyed. Zuko was safely sleeping in the arms of one of his adoring nurses, and Ursa was free to run across the gardens as she hadn’t before. 

The grass was squishy under her bare toes, welling up mud and dew and water, but she relished the sensation. She hadn’t ever done this before. It wasn’t ladylike to bound across the lawn. The hem of her gorgeously embroidered robe was surely trailing through the mud too, but Ursa didn’t care. Even as some voice in the back of her mind reprimanded her, told her she was far too old to skip like a child, the relief of having her body back in her own possession called much louder.

Ozai was laughing. His voice echoed in the early morning. Ursa couldn’t keep from blushing, but his amusement only made her run all the faster. It wasn’t long before she was panting, a stitch causing pain with each breath, and she wished for the endurance of a firebender, a soldier, one who had been trained to move rather than sit still and while the time away.

“I’m going to catch you, Ursa,” Ozai called. She knew it was a game, that if he put in his full effort he could catch her in an instant, but still she picked up her pace. It felt wonderful to be outside. The breeze blew her hair back, her feet were wet and cool, and the morning sun was bright enough to cast a pale light over the gardens and the palace walls.

“Will you?” She’d reached one of the towering old trees that bordered the turtleduck ponds. Some of the branches hung low enough to grab. And as if possessed by a spirit, Ursa took hold and pulled herself up.

The bark scraped her hands, but she hardly noticed. She felt like a child, but not like herself. She felt as if she was reliving a childhood she’d never been allowed to have. Had she ever wanted to do this before? It didn’t matter. Now she was wife to Prince Ozai, her firstborn son had been safely born, her twenty-first birthday was approaching, and she was scrambling through the branches of a tree. Oh, the things her mother would say.

Ursa was caught up in adrenaline and excitement, too eager in going up to think about the way down, and only when the branches became slim and there was nowhere else to climb did she look back.

The ground seemed far away. Suddenly there was no more childlike energy. There was just the bark, scraping away her skin as she clutched to it like a lifesaver. As foolish as a child, too, it seemed. She should have stayed inside where she belonged. Now she was going to fall, break her neck, not having appreciated that her first week with her son would also be her last.

“Ozai,” she tried, her voice small and quaking, as if speaking too loudly would slacken her grip. “Ozai!”

“I’m here.” And hearing his voice and seeing his face through the branches slowed her fluttering heart. “Stay there. I’m coming for you. I won’t let you fall.”

She was like a statue, like one of those odd furry animals she’d seen on their honeymoon on Ember Island, her arms wrapped tightly around the trunk and refusing to move in the slightest. She watched her husband pace about the tree. Was she imagining things, or was there a smile tugging at his lips?

“I’ll guide you down. Here, move your foot–”

“I can’t.” Tears were threatening at the corners of her eyes. She hated herself for being so stupid, for getting into such an avoidable situation. 

“Don’t you trust me?”

Of course she did. She couldn’t let him think she didn’t. So Ursa held her breath and slowly extended one foot, searching for the branch below.

“Ah, hold on.”

She froze.

“Do you see the branch to your right?”

She did. It was the thickest of those surrounding her. 

“Climb out on it.”

“Ozai?”

“I have you. Do as I say.”

As if pulled by the low command in his voice, she convinced her fingers to uncurl from the bark. She kept a shaking hand on the trunk and reached, very slowly, for the branch. It was a painstaking process, and it felt like hours must have passed before she was finally atop her new perch, watching the branch sway under her unsure feet.

Without warning, Ozai punched the air, and the crackle of fire split the early morning quiet. Ursa felt the impact, felt the _whoosh_ in her stomach as the branch broke off, but had no time or breath for anything but a squeak. She barely had time to close her eyes before she landed, not on the unforgiving ground, but in waiting arms.

She opened her eyes. Ozai was smiling. She was still too scared to breathe.

“You need to be careful,” he said, and kissed her, which didn’t help her breathe any better. When he pulled back, his smile was gone. “Shall I lock you in a gilded cage, milady?”

She blushed and looked away. How silly and foolish she was. To embarrass herself in front of him, of all people, to let childish whims seize hold of her…

“I’ve given you a son. What use is there for me now?” She smiled, wondering if he would think she was serious, wondering if she was serious.

“Wrong,” he breathed. “You are everything.” He kissed her again, vicious and passionate and all-consuming, so much hotter than the sun that rose above them.

“You will _always be_ everything.”


	34. Chapter 34

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Maizula, modern verse, basically smut with a dusting of angst. Yay!

The past few months have done a good job blurring Mai’s distinctions between excitement and fear, but now she’s fairly certain that the latter is dominating the former. The classroom is empty now, but Mai can see the doorway, open from when Azula pushed her through. Anyone could walk in. Anyone could hear them. And Mai does _not_ want to get caught letting Azula ravish her at school (or anywhere else, really, but school is the most pressing concern at the moment).

But _fuck_ if those teeth on her neck aren’t doing a decent job swaying her. Azula sucks and digs her incisors in harder and harder. The suction makes Mai’s head spin, makes her clit throb. She thrusts her hips in a futile search for friction; any longer and she’s afraid she’s going to soak through her panties and stain her skirt to boot.

Any thought gets sidetracked by pleasure, any word voicing her fears turns into a moan, and Mai is very close to coming to peace with this. Yes, she’s going to get caught with Azula, and she’s probably going to be expelled at the least and disowned at the worst, but somehow none of that seems so very important when Azula’s mouth leaves her fresh hickeys with a wet _pop_ and moves to her ear, when Azula’s hands are vices on Mai’s hips and she grinds against her, finally delivering the contact Mai so desires.

Azula somehow manages to steer them to the desk at the front of the room. She pushes Mai hard against the wood—definitely bruises across her hips tomorrow—and Mai obediently slides up onto the surface. Azula’s hands pull wildly at the buttons of Mai’s shirt, and their lips meet. Azula bites Mai’s bottom lip until she opens her mouth, and then their tongues slide together. Azula’s fingers are fumbling wildly with the buttons of Mai’s shirt; Mai’s hand that isn’t wrapped around Azula’s hips tangles in her hair, pulling it free of the bun and relishing the little gasps of pain Azula makes along the way.

Eventually they have to separate just to gasp for breath, but when Mai sees the look in Azula’s eyes, a good deal of her lust gives way to unease. Azula is blank and dark and desperate. Lightless. The way she looks before she strikes a match.

“We’ll get caught,” Mai manages to pant. Azula has finished with the buttons and pulls the shirt open. If she’d known they were going to do this, Mai would have worn something sexier than her plain white bra.

“Let them catch us,” Azula growls. It confirms Mai’s suspicions. This has nothing to do with uncontrollable schooltime lust and everything to do with self-punishment. “I don’t care.”

The question is ready and waiting on Mai’s lips, but before she can ask _what did he do this time?_ they’re kissing again, and damn she wishes this was just desire because she wouldn’t have to feel that horrible pit in her stomach if it was.

It takes quite an effort to take her hands off Azula’s back and place them gently on her chest instead. If Azula gets the hint she ignores it in favor of latching her nails into the skin of Mai’s shoulderblades. Mai hisses into the kiss and new wetness floods her already-drenched underwear. But she forces herself to push Azula away anyway.

It takes a good bit of force before Azula finally comes free. There is anger on her face now too, a snarl ready and waiting on her lips. She backs up, puts a good two feet of distance between them. Somehow she looks beautiful even furious, even when her red lipstick has smeared and her hair falls about her face in a disheveled curtain.

“We can’t. They'll—Azula, they'll—what do you think _he’ll_ do?”

Azula shakes her head and paces back and forth. It’s been a long while since Mai’s seen her this bad. She finds her bag on the floor and rifles impatiently through it before she produces the blue lighter that’s familiar to both of them. Mai’s heart lifts at first when she sees it and then plummets down when she realizes what’s coming next.

“What else _can_ he do?” Azula spits.

 _He could kill you._ Mai doesn’t say it. She is terrified of Azula’s response. She can imagine the smile, the voice, the eyes.

_I wish he would._

She watches Azula flick the lighter alive and raise her fingers to burn them with all the serenity of a monk.

“Wait,” Mai says breathlessly. Azula pauses and looks her way, but the flame stays.

“I’m sorry. Let’s go down together.” Mai spreads her thighs. One shaking hand slips her panties down and lets them slide all the way down her calves. She is _so_ going to regret this.

Azula lets the lighter close and turns toward Mai. Her expression is lighter now, but still she doesn’t move. Mai knows what she wants.

“Fuck me. …Please.”

Azula’s smile is cocky when it finally comes. She looks more like her usual self now. She closes the gap between them again and goes for Mai’s shoulder. Her nails have returned to Mai’s back. Her other hand leaves teasing, feather-light touches on Mai’s upper thighs. Mai bites her lip to keep from moaning. This is better, isn’t it, a different kind of burning? And who is there to catch them when all the other students have left?

“I love you when you beg,” Azula murmurs into Mai’s collarbone. Mai’s heart skips one beat, or several, and then she doesn’t care at all that she’s being fucked on her teacher’s desk. Not _I love it when you beg,_ but _I love you._

“Love you too,” she hums. Azula’s fingers slip between her wet labia. Fuck, the stretch is wonderful, and when Azula curls her middle finger into the place that makes Mai’s vision go white, when her thumbnail nips Mai’s aching clit, she couldn’t be gladder to be staying after school.

“Don’t get cocky.” Azula pulls back far enough to give her a smirk, and the next time her mouth goes down, she goes for blood.


	35. Chapter 35

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Urzai, pre-canon.

Her hands are shaking.

Her mother must surely be losing her mind. Ursa can imagine the string of acerbic reproaches that will fall from her lips the moment she goes home. Her mother will already have imagined the worse, and Ursa will have to tell her that it is exactly as dire as she fears.

The proposal seems serious. Ozai brought her before the Fire Lord and asked his permission, after all. But Ursa can already envision her mother’s scathing response. _Of course he promised! Eager to get you into bed, wasn’t he? And you fell for it, you stupid girl!_

And Ursa is afraid. She is afraid and ashamed and guilty. She _knows_ that he could cast her aside with a flick of his hand or a reproachful word. And the fear that he will is very much alive and well.

But these dark musings occupy only a vague corner of her mind. The bulk of her thoughts are steeped in sweet recollections of the previous evening. She thinks of the smile of her betrothed, the heat of his skin, what it was to wake in the morning encircled in his arms.

And so she shakes.

A gentle hand on the back of her neck brings her suddenly back to the present. She starts and looks up. The gold of his eyes is as beautiful as the first time she saw them. 

“Are you all right?” he asks. The seriousness of his tone is belied by the grin playing around his mouth. He hasn’t stopped smiling since that morning. It reminds her of the fanged grins of the canine predators that stalked the pages of the stories she loved when she was younger.

“Yes, of course,” she says without thinking. His hand is gone; she misses it. He settles himself across the table from her.

“My father didn’t scare you, did he? He’s all bluster.” Ozai pours both of them tea. 

“No,” she says, truthfully. Kneeling in front of the Fire Lord was far from the most terrifying part of the past few days. She can hardly even remember it now. 

“You’re shaking.” He puts down his cup and frowns at her.

“Oh! Um.” She hides her hands under the table and looks down in a futile attempt to conceal her blush.

“Are you all right?” he asks again.

“Yes,” she says, then takes a deep breath around the room. They are alone in his chambers, the servants gone, and this is as close to safety as she has ever felt. “I just can’t stop thinking about it.” Her voice is shaking too. “About your…hands on me.” Such an innocent phrase, but she feels stained just by uttering it.

The smile returns. Her breath speeds. Ozai abandons his tea and moves to her side of the table. His lips brush her ear.

“Is that all?”

“I want more,” she breathes, then can’t believe she said such a thing. But his smile only widens. His fingers are electric even against her clothed skin. He kisses her jaw and her throat.

“You’re insatiable.” It isn’t a reprimand and it doesn’t sound like one, but it awakens guilt in her nonetheless.

“I need to go home,” she says. “Mother will be waiting.”

“She’ll be waiting forever,” he says. He finds openings in the cloth and strips it from her. She arches into his touch. “I’m never letting you go.”


	36. Chapter 36

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Maizula, modern verse.

Mai can’t really feel her fingers, and every puff of her breath comes out as a cloud of steam in the frigid night air, but freezing or not she’s happy where she’s sitting. She stares out at the lights of the city beneath them. She can pick out the radio tower and the vibrant glow of downtown, and she imagines she can see her own house in the dimmer patches.

As if on command, Azula’s fingers intertwine with her own, and her companion’s skin is as warm as ever. Mai hesitates and then leans her head over to rest on Azula’s shoulder. Amazingly, no sarcastic remarks are forthcoming.

“You’re affectionate today.” Azula breathes out a cloud of smoke. Mai watches the tendrils drift up and away. For an instant the air smells ashen and acrid before the scent gives way to leaves and the winter wind again.

“Nobody’s watching,” Mai says truthfully. The temple on the hill behind them closed hours ago, and now its only visitors are two girls sitting on a park bench and looking down at the city.

“Somebody’s always watching.”

Azula hesitates, then lets her own head tilt until she’s resting on Mai’s. They sit there for what feels like forever but is much too short, holding hands, Mai’s ears succumbing to the cold too.

“I don’t want to go home,” Azula says abruptly. Mai glances her way. It’s the first explanation she’s gotten for why Azula brought them up here. But the other girl is as cold and unyielding as ever. She lifts the cigarette to her lips again, and together they watch the resultant plumes of smoke.

“Then let’s stay.” Mai doesn’t ask; she knows enough to guess. So they sit, silent but together, neither mentioning what they both know awaits Azula at home.

Mai pulls her head back. Azula is still looking at the city, her eyes unfocused, her face serene. It doesn’t matter how much time they spend together; Mai will always be taken aback by how beautiful she is.

Mai kisses her cheek, and then, when Azula angles her head the other way, her jaw and her neck. She gently pulls the skin between her teeth and sucks. It tastes like smoke. Azula lets out a little sigh.

“Feeling desperate, are we?” She lifts up her hand and slides it roughly into the hair along Mai’s scalp. It hurts, especially when she tugs. Mai gets the message and pulls away.

“I really want to take you home and get you out of all these clothes,” she murmurs. Azula’s not wrong. Mai’s always desperate. She wants Azula. She wants to feel.

“I wonder what your mother would say about that,” Azula says. She’s smirking.

“Fuck her,” Mai says indifferently.

There’s a pause. Azula takes another drag. Mai’s ears are numb now too. Maybe she’ll die of hypothermia on a park bench. It doesn’t sound so bad when Azula’s beside her.

“We could do it here,” Azula says, and it takes Mai a minute to realize she’s not talking about dying. “Like you said, nobody’s watching, right?”

“You really want to get dirt all over?”

Azula smiles. She lets her cigarette fall and crushes it into the ground with one high-heeled boot. They both look at it there. Mai wants to say something about littering. She doesn’t.

“Maybe someday you can take me home,” Azula says. Mai’s heart skips a beat. A hundred replies fumble through her brain, and none come out her mouth.

Then Azula is standing, and Mai’s not ready to let her go. 


	37. Chapter 37

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Urzai: red, wine, mouth.

“You like drinking, don’t you?” His voice is low and amused. It’s not a question; not really, not when he’s seen her like this time and again. She declines sake the first time with a respectful shake of her head, and then when it’s offered again she drinks and drinks and drinks until flowers blossom in her cheeks and her world shifts.

He likes her like that, on edge, something dark in her eyes, the proper lady burned away and a truer being remaining.

“You’re laughing at me,” she accuses. He wrestles his smile under control and smiles fondly down at her. He isn’t laughing at her. He’s admiring her, as always, this pretty thing that is his forever, every piece of her as fascinating as the next, all of it his to take his time in discovering.

“Never,” he says. “Just enjoying the view.”

Her cheeks go even darker. They almost match the silk of her robe. And her robe is really too much, he thinks, when it’s evening and they’re alone and dinner is done. 

“I do like it,” she says very quietly. She seems ashamed. He doesn’t like shame on her. He pulls her close and trails his fingers along her lips. The paint smudges onto his fingers. She parts her lips and he slides in, relishing the wash of her breath on him, pressing down on her tongue and stretching her cheeks. Her little moans around his fingers are irresistible. He wants her. His other hand, skilled now from weeks of practice, goes to work on the ties of her clothes.

He pushes too far. She gags. He withdraws and strokes her cheeks and her throat and her hair. She’s so soft. 

“I like losing control,” she says, more softly still, and her smile is gone completely when she cranes her neck to look at him.

His grin is wide and unfaltering.

“Yes,” he growls. His hand finds its home underneath the cloth, where he can feel her exquisite breasts and the juts of her ribcage and the rapid beating of her heart, like a bird frantically trying to escape its cage.


	38. Chapter 38

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Maizula, modern AU.

Azula runs her fingernails up and down the pantyhose. She likes the noise and the texture, to say nothing of the warmth of the white skin underneath. 

“You’ll run them,” Mai says. She’s still-faced, always so blank. No matter how far Azula pushes her, even when she orgasms, there’s something closed-off about her expression. Azula puts it down to repression, or maybe Mai’s only capable of three different facial expressions, but all the same she can’t help but want more, wonder about what’s hidden behind that mask.

“What a pity.” Azula’s nail crosses the border from the stockings onto Mai’s thigh. She can see veins underneath the surface, turning the skin blue. So translucent, as if Azula could bite cleanly through. She settles for digging her nails in and watching Mai’s teeth play with her lip.

“I thought you’d like it if I dressed up.” 

“And I do,” Azula purrs. The white lace of Mai’s bra and panties almost blends with her skin, making her look ghostly. Only her hair gives her any color at all. Somehow it still looks good on her. “White’s a daring choice, don’t you think? You’re hardly a virgin.”

Mai blinks, purses her lips a little. Azula thinks she sees a blush, but it’s gone too soon to be sure.

“White isn’t even the color of purity, you know. It’s an assumed association, but it’s not historically accurate. The whole thing with white, the wedding dress, comes from–”

“Queen Victoria. Yes, I know.” Azula digs in her nails a little harder. The place where Mai’s panties cover her cunt is darker than white now. Azula smiles. Voice and face as still as ever, but Mai is wet for her. “But I would say that if the association is widely assumed, then it’s still accurate symbolism, if not historically correct.”

“Talk dirty to me,” Mai deadpans, Azula tries not to smile, and a second later they’re both giggling.

“Pass me a cigarette,” Azula orders, stilling her humor into a more dangerous smirk. “You’d look better with burns.”


	39. Chapter 39

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Ozula: smile, heart, loyalty, canonverse.

“They’re incompetents, the lot of them,” he snarls, striding back and forth across the room like a hurricane, his robes swirling about him and seeming to fill even the vast space. 

In the past, she would have shrunk in on herself, afraid, but now she just watches with a bland, meaningless smile fixed on her mouth. She is used to this, all of this, and he responds better when she meets him with humor than with fear.

“If I ordered my generals to fight an Agni Kai, they would talk each other to death arguing about the proper arena before any of them threw fire. Other people are useless, Azula.” He fixes her in his steely, hawklike glare, and she looks back. She is not in the room. She is not meeting his eyes. She is somewhere and something other than the girl perched on the edge of the bed.

“Anything important, you need to do yourself.” He shakes his head. His eyes are distant, carrying contempt and disgust for the world beyond. When he begins undressing, it is absent-minded. Azula watches because there is nothing else to do. 

“If only I could fight a war single-handed, I’d execute them all and be done with it.” He leaves his robes in a mass on the floor. There are always servants to deal with them. There are always other people to clean up his messes. Azula sits and smiles as he walks toward her. Somehow he looks equally massive when unclothed. In the confines of his chambers, he seems powerful enough to win a war single-handedly. He takes what he wants.

His hand is a vise on her chin. She is still somewhere else. She is still smiling. His skin is very hot. It is always very hot. He makes her look up at him, but he cannot make her see him. He cannot make her exist in that moment. He can own and dominate every other piece of her, but her mind remains her own.

“You won’t disappoint me, will you?” he croons. He slips the transparent silk from her shoulders. She buckles obediently under his weight. The bed is as soft as ever.

“Of course not, Father,” she murmurs, and she means the oath with every fiber of her being.

He gives her a cold smile. “Oh, but they all said that too.”


	40. Chapter 40

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Maizula, canonverse, knifeplay, bloodplay.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Also, read Synnecrosis...it's lonely.

“You need a tighter grip,” Mai says quietly. Her eyes are fixed on Azula’s face rather than on the blade hovering near her cheek. Is it trust that Azula won’t take out her eye, or simply indifference? The princess wonders. 

“Like this?” Azula leans in. Mai, against the wall, has nowhere to go. Her face reveals nothing at all. Azula is smiling. The steel presses against Mai’s cheek, but she doesn’t flinch.

“Tighter.”

They are flat against the stone then, breast to breast, Azula’s knee separating Mai’s legs. Azula turns the knife. The slightest motion and a red line appears across Mai’s cheek. Her eyes flutter closed and then open again. Azula’s knee grinds against her.

It’s a superficial cut, but nonetheless blood pools thick and dark and runs down Mai’s face. She lifts steady fingers to wipe it away. Her eyes have not left Azula’s. 

“And that?”

Mai presses her fingertips to Azula’s lips, smearing them darker. Azula opens her mouth and licks them clean with greedy abandon. Mai leaves a streak of blood on the princess’s cheekbone. Her eyes flicker to it and back again.

“I’ll show you,” Mai says. She continues the ostensible lesson on knife-throwing technique by returning her fingers to the cut. She drags red down her jaw and her neck to her collar. 

Azula smiles. The knife in her hand follows the painted path. When she reaches cloth, she tears it away. She notices and hungers at the silent gasp Mai parts her lips to let escape. She rips and rips and cuts and cuts. Crimson drips down Mai’s chest. 

“You’re beautiful,” Azula murmurs. The edge of the knife plays teasingly with a nipple. Mai’s eyelids are heavy. Her teeth have long since found a home in her lower lip. 

“Shall we trade?” Mai’s hand covers Azula’s. Their fingers dance together along the blade.

Something flutters in Azula’s chest, a different kind of hunger. She knows fear and exhilaration. She wants to see how far Mai will go. She gives a measured and calculated smile.

“We shall.” She lets Mai take the knife.

Mai makes a show of her eyes drifting over Azula’s clothed form with lascivious slowness. Azula hates the feeling; Azula loves the feeling.

Mai smiles for the first time.


	41. Chapter 41

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Azula, post-canon, angst.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> We're all caught up now; these are all the ficlets I've written on tumblr (or at least the ones I've tagged well enough that I can go back and find them). So from now on, there won't be nightly updates. There'll just be updates whenever I write something new on tumblr.

She has absolutely nothing to do here but think.

The silence eats away at her like a physical thing, or maybe that’s just the objections of her body as she tries to stifle its will to keep her alive. The pain is physical and emotional and mental all at once, a force that she cannot forget about or ignore. There is no distraction. The only time she can slip away is when she sleeps, and the visions that accost her in the twilight between sleeping and waking are horrifying enough to make her fear that just as much.

_You failed. You are nothing. You failed. You are nothing. You failed you are nothing failed nothing failed nothing failedthing fail–_

The refrain circles her mind again and again and again. There is no way out. In the first days she screamed and cried, but she lacks the energy for that now. She stares at the unchanging wall and wonders why she can’t summon the strength to just bite off her tongue and get it over with.

Because she has to think about _something,_ she traces each forsaken event back to its inception. She recalls everything with near-perfect clarity. It was a gift. Now it’s a torment. She remembers every little look Mai and Ty Lee exchanged. She remembers Zuko’s brooding, terse words. 

(She remembers being nine again: Ursa disappearing from her life without bothering to say goodbye; Ozai smiling at his father’s funeral; something rotten catching up to the semblance of a family and destroying it from the inside out.)

There are so many mistakes that she cannot begin to think what she should have done differently. There are so many mistakes there that she knows she deserves this. So many things she could have avoided. So many things she was too foolish to see. She supposes that’s why she’s still breathing; she’s too stupid to deserve to die.

 _I’m proud of you,_ Ursa whispers from the corner of the cell, and if Azula’s hands were free she would rip her own throat out.

A bout of fever catches her and she hears the doctors worry aloud as her temperature rises and rises. She knows it’s no disease. With nowhere else to go, with bending impossible given the degree of her restraints, her fire is burning her alive.

She laughs and laughs even as the heat blurs the cell into the palace and the manacles into her father’s hands. They can force her mouth open to push food down her throat, but perhaps this will be enough to end it.

They force her into a cooling chamber and the fever breaks. They put her back in her cell, she sits and stares at the wall, and nothing has changed.

Zuko comes to see her. She notes snidely that it takes her almost dying. She would almost try harder to keep herself alive if she never had to see him again. But there he is, the traitor, sitting cross-legged on the far side of the bars in robes he does not deserve.

“The recovery is going well,” he says awkwardly. “Uh, the nation’s, I mean.”

She will not entertain his asinine attempt at civility. 

“No, it’s not. The Earth Kingdom is taking advantage of the Avatar and your traitorous leanings to punish the citizens. The colonies have been reclaimed. Our military has been almost entirely disbanded. And the people resent you for it. Fire Lord Zuko’s more interested in protecting the Earth Kingdom’s interests than his own nation. And then there’s all the greedy, corrupt nobles you’ve been displacing…watch your back, Zuzu.”

She sees fear and confusion and anger on his face, and she smiles.

“Am I close?”

He jumps to his feet. “I’m trying, Azula! What does it take? Why are you so stubborn? Isn’t there _anything_ you regret? You have to move forward! It took me a long time too, you know, but you have to at least _try!”_

“There _is_ something I regret,” she says slowly. Her smile is gone. She lets her eyes fix on his feet. “I regret not killing you at Ba Sing Se, and I regret letting you draw every ungrateful breath after that.”

He glares down at her, his anger apparently beyond words. How he resembles their father. Ozai and Zuko have used her and discarded her just the same. She bows her head and hears his footsteps on his way out.


	42. Chapter 42

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> I know I wouldn't be updating daily, but I just happened to write this today. But seriously, I'm not updating daily. :P
> 
> Ursa, Urzai-ish, "pleasure."

The day when she looks at her family and realizes that she has done something repulsive comes much, much too late.

Her mother has been dead since before Azula was born, but now Ursa wishes more than anything she could see her again. She knows what her mother would say. She can hear the stinging rebuke in that scratchy voice as clearly as if her mother died yesterday.

_What did you expect? Naive little wretch! Why should I call you daughter any longer, when all you do is scorn my words? You see now, don’t you! You see I’m right!_

Ursa sees the rot as if it is a physical thing. She can see it consuming all of them. She is not eating as she should be. She cannot sleep. There is only that thing, and it is all her fault. She cries in the night, and he hears her, and his response is the same as ever.

His kisses feel like guilt again. She can’t enjoy their lovemaking any longer. Her pleasure is where it all started, so she denies herself that. When she looks up at her lord husband, the face she knows so well, all she can see is the anger that twists it when he says treacherous things about his father, when he carelessly insults Zuko’s latest bending displays. 

She pleads illness, pleads headaches, tells him he’s too tired, but somehow his quick tongue always manages to change her mind, and somehow he always ends up on top of her anyway.

If only it was only her. Her life matters little to her. It always has, from the time when her parents raised her as nothing more than a pawn to be married off. If it was only her, she would let the rot eat her alive as it wished, take her husband down too, and give it no other thought.

But the children are another matter. And with each displeased glance Ozai sends Zuko’s way at the dinner table, Ursa grows more and more certain of a grim truth. She has sacrificed all of them at the altar of her lust. This is her work, hers alone. She saw something dangerous in him and embraced it rather than fleeing, and now her children are caught in the fallout. 

She catches Zuko up past midnight, exhausted and bruised and trying to perfect a firebending form much too advanced for him. She catches Azula, unrepentant, practicing her aim on turtleducks.

“ _If they can’t dodge fast enough, they deserve to get burned, don’t they?”_ the seven-year-old says, and a chill runs down her mother’s spine and suffuses her whole being.

Ozai catches her in the library, where she’s taken to spending vast scads of time. His hand feels like a shackle on her wrist. His breath on her neck makes her shudder. She wonders if he can notice her shaking. She wonders if anyone else can see the disease that started inside of her and spread to all of them.

“You’ve been so distant lately,” he says. His voice is low and playful. It used to arouse her. It did not used to terrify her.

“There’s something wrong,” she says, despite herself.

“Yes,” he agrees. “You’re still clothed.”

Ursa cannot remember an exact moment when her life transformed from a daydream to a nightmare. All she can do is watch, certain of the horror, afraid to open her mouth lest she start screaming aloud.


	43. Chapter 43

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Maizula, canonverse, painplay, PWP.

"Does Zuko ask about these?"

She bites, ruthless and bloodthirsty, sucks on the damp skin until she thinks she can feel Mai's pulse in her mouth. She grinds her teeth in and relishes every little noise her stubborn conquest makes. Mai plays so cold, so unflinching, but the wanton gasps and moans that slip from her tight lips prove her to be something entirely different.

The wet skin slides from Azula's red lips and she seizes a new patch. She will mark every inch of Mai's throat, purple and green and brown joining the bruises already there, and Mai will admit she enjoys it with every shuddering breath.

"Does he even know what they are? Does he even know which hole to put it in?" Her laugh comes derisive and gleeful, all the more so because she feels Mai tense. "Does he just kiss you and call it sex?"

"Yours isn't the only way of _fucking_ ," Mai says shortly.

Azula's long-nailed fingers find and dig into a nipple, twisting it brutally and noting the hitch in Mai's breath with satisfaction. She pins the little bud between her nails. In the mirror she can see her hands at work. In the mirror she can see the blush on Mai's cheeks and the drunken look on her face. She can see her breasts, covered with scratches, some deep enough that red trickles out of them. And she can see Mai's legs splayed to show the wetness between her thighs. It drips more with each touch and each taunt. She'll probably ruin Azula's pants at this rate, but that hardly matters.

"Oh, but it's the only way you like." Azula releases her nipple and then flicks it cruelly. Mai cries out at that, though her teeth latch into her lip to truncate the sound. "Otherwise you wouldn't be here, would you?"

Breath as hot as fire washes over the mottled skin of Mai's shoulders and neck. It dries the wet patch and sears the flesh pink. To Mai's credit, she doesn't cry out, though her teeth are gritted. She's covered in sweat all over, shaking and suffering and wanting.

"Please, Highness."

The use of her title satisfies Azula. She brings one hand up to playfully caress Mai's throat. She runs her fingers over her jugular and her windpipe. She imagines what it would be to close her hand around that neck. Mai would go paler and paler, her chest frantically heaving, her eyes watering. And she'd thank Azula for it, come back again and beg to be throttled again.

She's so fucking _disgusting,_ but Azula knows she can hardly talk.

"Please what?"

Her other hand tangles in Mai's hair and drags her head back so she can see the lines her nails are tracing on her throat.

"Your fingers...touch me."

"I don't think so," Azula says quietly. And how she loves the indignation on Mai's face at that, the other girl straining against her. "You have my brother's cock, don't you? And you have your own hand. You just come to me for pain."

Her fingers on Mai's neck scald without warning. Mai silently buckles forward, her arms catching the wood of the vanity and straining at the effort of holding herself up. It's a quiet surrender.

Azula smiles and stands; Mai very nearly falls to the floor, but she catches herself and glares up at her princess. Azula doesn't mind. Her gaze is all for her own reflection. Not a bead of sweat glimmers on her cheeks. Her hair is immaculate, her clothes only slightly rumpled. The only problem is the red smear of her lips.

"That's enough playing, I think," she says. She spares no glances for the other girl. "Father's expecting me."

"Then playtime's just begun, hasn't it?" Mai says.

Azula looks sharply at her. There is no fear in Mai. She stares back evenly.

"If you're still here when I get back," Azula says eventually, "I'll see what other ways to hurt you I can come up with."

Mai's lips hint at a smile. She'll be there.


	44. Chapter 44

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Maizula, modern AU, an argument.

“Go, then,” Azula says, her eyes bright and her teeth bared, somewhere between a smile and a snarl. Usually she argues cold or laughing, not like this, with tears threatening. The last time Mai saw her like this was–well. 

Mai is the cold one today, though she does not relish the role. She looks at Azula and is of two minds, one that wants to crumble and kneel and reassure, and one that finds her lover’s glimmering eyes disgusting, laughable. Somehow those two minds come together like this, like a statue, indifferent.

“You can’t always do that. You can’t make everything a matter of staying or leaving.”

“But it is.” Her lips become more smile than snarl for an instant. “If you don’t want to be here, go. You want to be here or you don’t. You _love me_ or you don’t.” The words are mocking. Mai doesn’t think they will ever lose their acidity. Azula cannot comprehend love without a sneer.

“You don’t want to change.” She delivers the accusation as evenly as she has delivered all her words tonight. This all started with a common occurrence, with Azula clambering into her bed long past midnight, the only sign of her previous whereabouts the lingering taste of scotch on her lips.

The uncommon occurrence was Mai saying something. She does not regret that. She does not regret that the night will end in stinging words instead of the sting of nails on her back and teeth on her neck.

She has given up on regret. There is too much down that road.

“No, I don’t,” Azula agrees. She gets off the bed and stands still, slightly swaying, in the middle of the room. Her lips are red with blood from the wounds she has worried into them. “But thank you for admitting that you’d like to change me.”

She does not slam the door when she goes.

Mai sits awake in bed for a long time, knees drawn up to her chest as she silently observes her dark and empty room. Her cold anger simmers, lacking an outlet. 

She thinks of going, of running, of leaving behind the _mess_ that is Azula and never looking back.


	45. Chapter 45

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Maizula, canonverse, unsolicited opinions.

“The beard is hideous,” Azula says, just loud enough for her voice to carry.

“Oh, undoubtedly,” Mai agrees. 

The general passing by makes it obvious that he has heard them when he turns his head. Azula narrows her eyes, silently dares him to make eye contact. In the end, the man is wise enough not to; he faces forward again, and only the color of his face gives away his reaction.

Lazy days are best spent like this, the princess supposes, with her girls on either side of her as they sit in the gardens and observe the passers-by. The knives in between Mai’s fingers say that they are practicing, but in reality the afternoon has devolved into an exercise in pettiness. It is a poor outlet for the many things Azula has been feeling and thinking about, but it is an outlet nonetheless. In the past, she would never entertain such foolishness, but now, with her father distracted by the homecoming of the _favored_ child, she has already lost her grasp on perfection. She is slipping over the edge and making no attempt to catch herself.

She tries to shake off the malaise of thoughts, though self-loathing still burns a slow hole in her insides. 

“I think most beards are gross,” Ty Lee offers. She isn’t as good at the game as the other two, too generous, less _sharp._

“Well, yes,” Azula acquiesces, after thinking of hair bristling against her lips and chin.

“At least they’re a mark of maturity, or something. Better than--ah.” Mai leans forward, and the other two follow her gaze. A patrol of guards is passing, and one of the four men looks barely older than the girls. He walks with his shoulders nervously set, his eyes flicking left and right.

Ty Lee sucks a sympathetic breath in through her teeth. Azula cackles. The boy isn’t as wise as the general; he looks around at the sound. When he catches sight of the three of them, he bows and stutters an apology before his fellows can drag him along. All the while, Azula’s golden eyes bore unrelentingly, mercilessly, into him, until he rounds the corner and is gone.

“He’ll grow into his armor sooner or later,” the princess says. The other two laugh.

“Do you trust him with your protection?” Mai asks. There is a rare smile on her lips, almost enough to salvage the afternoon. Almost.

“I trust nobody with my protection,” Azula says. She takes a knife from Mai’s hand and throws. It buries itself in the tree that has been their target, and she smiles. “Especially not guards that look about as competent as my dear brother.”

Mai tenses. The smile goes. 

“He did bring down the Avatar,” Ty Lee says tentatively.

Azula smiles. Her lie. It is corroding her.

“So he did.” She thinks of Ba Sing Se and catacombs lit by an eerie green. She thinks of a throne and true power. She thinks of how her father has looked at her since she came home. Before, she represented a duality to him, but now that Zuko is here, he has replaced one of her functions.

It is an outcome she did not anticipate.

She thinks of these things and smiles.

That evening, she manages to coax Mai to stay. They sit together in her rooms, the princess with her hair down and her head in Mai’s lap. Mai runs her fingers through her hair, and it feels good.

“You deserve better,” Azula says abruptly.

Mai’s fingers pause. “What?”

“You deserve better than my brother.” She smirks. “A truth.”

“Oh, are we still playing?” Mai takes a breath. “He’s more than what you think of him.”

Azula’s eyes narrow. “He’s nothing, and he never will be anything.”

“Are you talking about him or worrying about yourself?”

The blow comes as Mai surely knew it would. Azula means to draw blood, but her fingernails are short now. She had forgotten. A slap is just a slap. She’s so _weak._

“I should go,” Mai says stiffly. She does not wait for the princess’s approval. She crosses quickly to the door and hovers for a second.

She does not say what she wants to say. She leaves, the words _you deserve better too_ burning on her lips where Azula will never hear them.


	46. Chapter 46

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Post-canon, Fire Lady Mai cheating on Zuko.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> guess what month it is

There is someone sitting on the throne, though it's the middle of the night. The flames that always burn are burning still, but in the wrong (right) color. The Fire Lady makes her quiet way across the room to observe the figure kneeling in place.

She left Zuko sleeping soundly. She left their daughter in the room beside their own. On these nights, when she enters the throne room, she enters a different world.

Azula's eyes are closed and her chin cast upward. Her clothes are black and only loosely wrapped around her, showing swathes of white skin. She might be a statue; certainly she's as beautiful as one. She was made to sit here, with blue light lending her an eerie, inhuman glow. Before _this_ started, Mai never saw Azula on the throne. It was an image all three of them discussed, in those rare moments that the princess could be persuaded to speak treachery against her father, but never more than a fantasy. Now the thing is real and as it should be.

"They'll catch you sneaking in sooner or later," Mai says. She forces herself not to whisper, though her voice sounds loud and wrong in the empty space. If guards hear the noise and look in, it wouldn't be damning—not yet, anyway—but still, not ideal.

"These guards? No," Azula says. She doesn't move or open her eyes. "I'm doing the Fire Lord a favor. Imagine if I was an assassin? You would all be dead. You need to hire better help."

Mai isn't afraid of assassins. There is nobody like Azula. There is only Azula.

But the incompetence of the royal guard does grate on her. She'd like to toughen them up, find Azula caught and wriggling in their arms, beat her hated lover at her own game. A foolish ambition as old as their _friendship._

Mai has won once, but both of them would rather forget that occasion.

"Are you not an assassin? Last time you told me that's what you were doing in the Earth Kingdom." Mai doesn't know how much of what Azula tells her is truth. Probably not much at all. When it isn't these rare nights, she disappears off the map, sometimes for weeks, even months. Then a messenger hawk will arrive, and Mai will leave her sleeping husband and come to kneel before the throne.

Azula says the work she's doing is in the Fire Lord's best interests. Mai idly wonders and occasionally asks which Fire Lord she means, a question Azula never answers except with a smile.

Mai sometimes wonders if Azula doesn't spend the off-time in a dark room, curled in on herself and fraying at the edges. If she paints her mask and comes here to play at being powerful again.

But she doesn't like thinking about that.

"When I come here, I'm not a killer." Azula opens her eyes. The firelight turns her irises blue. "Just a thief."

Mai looks at her and _burns._ And pride does not stop her from dropping to her knees to honor the throne of her Fire Lord.

"No," Azula corrects herself. She strokes Mai's hair and her face gently, almost mockingly. She spreads her knees to make room between them. "Zuko is the thief."

Those words burn like guilt and anger and lust in Mai's stomach. She leans forward and relearns the taste and feel and smell of the woman she loathes and loves in equal measure. They stay like that, together on the throne, blue fire around them, both thinking of a world where things turned out differently.


	47. Chapter 47

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Azutara, post-canon.

The princess is dressed in white when Katara sees her. She is almost as pale as her clothing and looks wraithlike, cloth and dark hair blowing around her. She is thin, sallow, shadows like bruises under her eyes.

Overall, she looks much better than the last time.

She does not smile when she sees Katara. She straightens and holds herself imperiously, looking more like the warrior who pursued them across the Earth Kingdom and less like the broken girl locked in a cell and withering away. But the expression on her face is not contempt or hatred or fear. She stands tall and stately and recognizes an equal.

The guards flank her, the doctor in charge of Azula's care just behind them. Three years ago, the princess had Dai Li agents on either side. Now she has orderlies. Her empire has narrowed to an austere building and a cell.

"Azula," Katara says. She is feeling many things, but her voice is strong.

Azula's eyes narrow. The rest of her is fading away, diminished, but those eyes are unchanged. They burn from their sunken sockets like all the fire the princess has been denied these past years.

Her nostrils flare. Katara can almost see the acid retorts coming to life and dying one by one on her tongue.

"Katara," she finally says, and the sneer curled in the name is not nearly as pronounced as it could be.

The doctor and the orderlies give them space, standing by the doors into the asylum while the pair wander about the garden. Azula isn't wearing shoes; Katara looks down and watches her white feet press into mud and against stone. She doesn't seem to care.

Has she been acquiescing to bathing? Has she been eating? Is she still somewhere between life and death, unsure which suits her better?

The letters hang in the air between them. In person, they are still enemies, or at least strangers. The Azula that Katara has come to know on paper over the last year seems removed from the one standing before her now.

"You can go outside now?" she ventures.

Azula's lips press into a tight line.

"A reward for good behavior. They love control."

_Was it really any better before? Was it really any better with him?_

Katara doesn't ask. Perception makes a world of difference; she understands that. Azula no longer has even the pretension of pride. Before, at least, she could lie to herself.

"Does Zuko—?"

"We will not speak of my brother," Azula says, leaving no room for discussion.

Katara silences, a bit put-out. She remembers the last letter, the invitation contained. Now she's here, and she doesn't know why.

Azula kneels in the dirt and plucks a blooming chrysanthemum. Her fingers flex around it. She hesitates for a moment, then crushes it in her palm. She rips the petals apart with her nails. Katara notices that they've been kept short, undoubtedly to prevent the princess from scratching herself.

An animal in a cage.

"They won't let me bend," Azula says. She says it abruptly, breathlessly. There are shredded bits of flower on her fingers and under her fingernails. "They'll let me outside, but—three years, and I—"

Katara tries to imagine that. Three years without water at her fingertips. Three years feeling the moon's pull in her veins and being unable to respond. She cannot; she doesn't think any bender could.

And she understands, then, what she is being asked. What the last letter was, and what this confession was.

A cry for help.

"I will talk to them," she says, and stands. "Or Zuko—sorry. Someone. We'll—I'll work something out. This isn't right."

Azula straightens, expressionless again. She brushes dirt impatiently from her hands. She looks Katara up and down, stares into her eyes.

She inclines her head.


	48. Chapter 48

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Maizula, modern AU, Valentine's Day.

The date means little to her. It is as meaningless as anniversaries, as holidays in general. Time is nothing but a collection of arbitrary numbers, and this day in particular seems exceptionally foolish. A day to celebrate lovers? How asinine. A day for shops to fill their windows with pink and red flowers and pretend there is anything romantic about buying things.

The day doesn't mean anything. It doesn't have to mean anything. But after enough time, after birthdays and anniversaries gone by without celebration, she feels uneasy. She isn't doing enough. She isn't doing very much at all. Mai does not demand, and so Azula doesn't know what she wants. She hides her feelings behind the curtain of her bangs and her still face.

In retrospect, Ozai seems easy. Predictable. As simple as _in-out_ to hear what she wanted to hear. (She forgets that it wasn't like that, forgets all the times he left her aching and bruised without the relief offered by empty words of love.)

But Mai...Mai's harder. She doesn't give things up easily, and Azula refuses to beg. They offer each other seeds of honesty buried in jests and sarcasm. Azula is tired of digging.

The gift is obvious too, which is a relief.

Mai has class, but Azula takes the day off, goes to the supermarket, and spends the afternoon in the apartment's kitchen. Of the pair of them, Azula is not the one with culinary inclinations, so it's a frustrating process that loses its appeal before she's even a quarter of the way done.

When the chocolate is in the freezer, Azula sits in the bedroom, looking out the window and thinking about Valentine's Day.

Ozai liked holidays. They made good excuses. A year ago, he'd taken her out to eat, gotten her pliant with sake, and kept her up past one.

 _"An important day for lovers,"_ he'd said, laughing. _"And isn't that what we are?"_

Azula has kept the jewelry and lingerie and clothing. They were all presents he bought for her, each one with strings attached. That is what a present is, an obligation, a contract. Everything he did for her had _you owe me_ just below the surface.

That's why she only makes Mai chocolate. It's why she hasn't bought her anything material in as long as they've been together.

She thinks that even chocolate is too much.

Mai comes home to find Azula still sitting on the bed. She drops her bag and raises her eyebrows when Azula looks around at the noise.

"Uh, hey."

Azula doesn't respond. She stands and heads for the kitchen. Her day has been seized by melancholy. What a stupid idea. Work is best for avoiding her thoughts. Long scads of free time lead to wallowing.

"I made this for you," she says brusquely, fetching her efforts from the freezer and holding the chocolate out for Mai to inspect.

Mai is surprised; that much is made clear by her wide eyes and hesitation.

"You—made?"

Azula impatiently motions the chocolate toward her until she takes it. She thinks of the many things she is trying to say.

_I love you._

_Please don't leave._

_You deserve better._

"It's an important day for _lovers,_ isn't it?" she drawls mockingly.


	49. Chapter 49

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Maizula, modern AU, Zuko gets an unpleasant surprise.

“Diamonds?” he says nervously, tapping his fingers against the glass until the man behind the counter gives him a dirty look and he stops, hurriedly stuffing them into his pocket instead. “It’s supposed to be diamonds, right?”

She sighs, makes her lack of interest in this affair obvious. “If you’re asking what it’s supposed to be, why even bother bringing me and not just look it up?”

“Not diamonds?”

“If you get her a diamond, make it a blood diamond. Women like knowing someone suffered for our sake.”

He gives her a sideways look.

“I think that’s just you.”

She considers and then concedes the point with a nod.

“If you think I shouldn’t go with what it’s supposed to be, then…I don’t know. Something black? That would suit her, anyway.”

“There you go.” Azula moves along the case and taps one red-lacquered nail against the counter. The salesman hurries over and extracts the ring she indicates, an intricate silver band with one large circular centerpiece, smoky-grey in color, flanked by several smaller stones.

“What are those?” Zuko peers down at the ring and then back at Azula.

“Black pearls. Suitable, no?”

“Well, they’re nice,” he says dubiously. 

When the salesman tells them the price, a little testily, Zuko seems to balk. But Azula curls a hand around his shoulder and says that _surely_ if he loves her that much it’s hardly a drop in the bucket, isn’t it?

He pays.

* * *

The apartment Mai and Zuko share is warm. Comfortable. It takes after Iroh’s, undoubtedly. Plants and pictures and something of a mess. Azula has never been there before. She wanders through the single bedroom and the living room and kitchen, taking it all in, observing the life shared by these two people she knows so well. Five years Mai and Zuko have been living together, and the evidence is everywhere.

Will it look the same tomorrow? Azula wonders. Will tonight end up changing everything?

She wanders back into the main room. Mai is still sitting there (of course she is; she can’t exactly move in her current state), still panting and sweating from the last round. Zuko’s girlfriend sits tied to a chair in her own apartment, clad only in black lace. Her cheeks are bright red, her hair disheveled. What a pretty picture she makes, Azula thinks. Almost as pretty as Zuko discovering them will be.

Mai leans back to look at her as she passes. She takes long, slow blinks, her eyelids struggling to stay open. Too much to drink? She always has been a lightweight.

“A sip?” Azula swirls the brown liquid in her glass, ice cubes sloshing against the sides. 

Mai nods, head rolling a little. She leans back as Azula holds the glass to her lips and tilts it back. Anyone else might spill. Azula does not spill, though she does imagine how the whiskey would look rolling in rivulets down Mai’s chin and between her breasts. Not as lovely as blood, certainly, and too sticky, but nice nonetheless. 

Mai doesn’t know what will happen tonight. Zuko is supposed to spend the weekend away. He intends to surprise Mai with his early homecoming, with a ring and a proposal. Azula intends to surprise Zuko with the sight of his would-be fiancée eagerly offering herself to his younger sister.

“Do you want to go again?”

She lifts one high-heeled foot to prod the sopping lace between Mai’s thighs. Mai doesn’t try to stifle her moan or the roll of her hips upward; she was past that point three shots and three orgasms ago.

“Why–why are you being so _nice_ tonight?”

Her suspicion, apparently, remains intact. Azula would be wounded, but considering that she does in fact have an ulterior motive, it’s hard to be too upset.

She opens her mouth to answer that question when the sound of keys in the lock interrupts her. Both of them freeze, Mai looking like a statue and Azula trying to slow down time, to enjoy the moment while it lasts. Part of the reason she has put this off so long is to be able to savor every last second. She fears it will go by too quickly.

Neither of them speaks before the door opens, and then there he is. Zuko. Brother. Would-be fiancé. 

He’s wearing coat and scarf and gloves, his cheeks flushed from the warmth outside. He’s wearing a broad smile as well, one that slowly diminishes as he sees his sister standing in his apartment, and then disappears entirely as he takes in Mai behind her.

“What the hell?” he asks finally, and perhaps now the color in his cheeks is not from the cold. His eyes glance back and forth between Mai and Azula as if unsure where to direct the question.

“You–why are you home early?” Mai asks, apparently trying for casual despite the mountain of incriminating evidence. Then again, Zuko always has been a fool who would rather believe an easy lie; Azula almost believes Mai could excuse her way out of this one.

“I–” He colors even further. Azula smiles despite herself. She knows the answer to that question. She knows exactly what Zuko has in his coat pocket.

“We’re just having a bachelorette party, Zuzu.” She intimates herself smoothly into the conversation. “Just a chance for Mai to have some fun before she winds up trapped in the confines of monogamy with you.”

She grinds her foot down. Mai _moans_ , long and loud, and then clamps her guilty mouth shut when her dulled reason catches up to pleasure.

“What the hell is that supposed to mean?” His voice is rising. As always, so quick to anger.

“I don’t know. What does that mean, Mai?” Azula asks, returning her attention to the woman in the chair. Mai looks back up at her, face red and mouth slightly agape, clearly much too out of it to adequately deal with the current situation.

“I’m sorry,” she says, finally, unable to look Zuko in the eye. He turns his face, drawn with anger, on his sister. For a moment she is taken aback by the resemblance to a dead man; for a moment the joke is no longer funny.

But she holds on to herself, remembers where and when she is, and her smile falters only a little. 

“What it _means_ is that Mai has been…enjoying something on the side for, oh, seven years now?”

Another grind, another whimper. Mai tries for a glare but manages only a weak sort of displeasure.

“Azula–”

“Stop lying!” 

Zuko’s fists are clenched. He looks out of place in the apartment with his coat still on. As it should be, Azula thinks; he is the one who does not belong. The perfect evening he imagined has crumbled before his eyes. He is still caught somewhere between that fantasy and the reality.

“Of course. My apologies.” Azula sets her nearly-empty cup down, moves her foot to a sound of displeasure from Mai, and circles around the back of the chair. She twines both her hands through Mai’s hair, petting and stroking, soft against her fingers. “I’m sure there’s another explanation for all this. One that would suit you better.”

She stares him down. She doesn’t give an inch. She is waiting for an explosion, for the invocation of any number of deities, for Zuko to attack.

He looks at Mai, silently waiting for an answer.

She leans into Azula’s touch like a cat. Even now, even with things as they are, she cannot stop herself.

“I’m sorry,” she says again, finally, hoarsely.


	50. Chapter 50

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Maizula, post-canon, angst

The first time she attempts it, she can’t even finish the salutation before she is irritated with herself and furious with the woman who will never read the letter. She spills her inkwell across it and watches the black puddle spread across her writing desk. It is a rebellious habit retained from childhood; whenever her mother set her to practice calligraphy, she would occasionally grow bored and destroy all her pretty lines. Then she would clean up the spill before it could be discovered and she could be punished for it. A private rebellion, ultimately useless. After all this, she has ended up exactly where her parents wanted her.

Now she could call a servant. The spill will have no consequences at all. She could stain every desk in the palace, rip apart every sheet of paper, and what would it matter? But she wipes it up herself in silence. The offending note dries slowly, the few characters she completed disappeared into the dark stain.

Not often does she mind being born a non-bender, but there would be something satisfying about flicking her wrist and sending it up in flames. As it is, she makes do with the fireplace on the far wall. She watches it crackle and burn and wonders what she meant to achieve in the first place. She does not speak her feelings aloud. Nor will she externalize them in writing. She will swallow them down and wait for them to wither.

* * *

The second time, she skips salutation and introduction altogether. Her pen dashes in angry lines across the paper. _What did you expect?_ she writes. _What did you think all of this would come to?_ _Were you so confident in fear as a weapon?_

But that’s no good, because she already knows the answer to that question. _Fear is the only weapon,_ a cold-eyed girl informs her in her mind. She could be nine or fourteen or sixteen; Azula does not change. Mai wonders if any of them can. Perhaps her heart is destined to be trapped in the past. She wouldn’t be writing the letters in the first place if she was capable of moving on.

She rips it into small pieces and throws them on the fire once more. They crumple and burn and turn to ash, and how she wishes they could take everything she feels with them.

She is a pretender, with her rich robes and the crest in her hair. A Fire Lady with no fire in her soul. Zuko deserves better. He deserves someone who can stand strong beside him and believe in the future of them and their nation. But she is a shadow, always destined to be a puppet moving on someone else’s strings. She loathes that. She loathes how plainly she sees it and how little she can do about it.

Change, she tells herself. Grow.

Smile, her mother’s voice echoes.

* * *

Zuko visits. Visited. He always set out in the mornings with the air of a condemned man going to the gallows, and he would always return looking somewhere between distraught and angry. He didn’t like talking about it, and Mai didn’t like asking. She tells herself she already knows what she would hear. She pretends that ignoring Azula’s existence will lead to forgetting her. She pretends it even as the specter eats away at her.

Eventually the visits became too much. He would go once a month, then once every three months, and then not at all. Zuko’s sister withers under the care of the best physicians the Fire Nation can offer. Mai pictures her so clearly. The white of the institution’s clothes would suit her. Everything would.

She reads the letters, progress reports, when Zuko leaves them on his desk. Maybe he does it deliberately, knowing she wants to. Maybe he knows everything, knows that the woman he married is perhaps just as much of a monster as the girl they’ve abandoned behind closed doors.

_...It is my unfortunate duty to report that the patient shows little sign of progress...she refuses to eat of her own volition and shows little interest in any activity. We are doing the best we can, but her condition may only continue to deteriorate. In my professional opinion, interacting with others may be the most viable option for recovery. Given Your Majesty’s undoubtedly demanding schedule and the patient’s fragile state, perhaps exchanging letters would be a possibility?…_

* * *

She does not want Azula to get better. She does not care about Azula. She hates Azula. She will forget her, will her out of existence, and she will be happier for it. She does not miss the derision and threats, sharp nails against her throat. She does not miss the orders. She does not miss the bloody kisses.

She wishes she could conform herself to the person she should be. She wishes she could say things and have them all come true. Instead she sits and pens a single line, and then throws the letter onto the fire and goes looking for her knives, and it is only the thought of the rounding of her stomach and Zuko that makes her throw them at a target instead of sliding them cleanly across her own skin.

_I miss you,_ a burning letter reads, before the words are lost to the flames.

**Author's Note:**

> Comments always appreciated!


End file.
